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CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

Sketch op Macaulay's Life up to the Fal\ ov \ah M-e\ 

BOURNE Government 1 



CHAPTER II. 
Characteristics . 38 

CHAPTER III. 

The "Essays" ..." 66 



CHAPTER IV. 

Narrative of Macaulay's Life Resumed up -wi the Appear- 
ance of the "History" 106 



CHAPTER V. 
The "History" 136 

CHAPTER VI. 
The End ..... 171 



MACAULAY. 



^ CHAPTER I. 

SKETCH OF MACAULAy's LIFE UP TO THE FALL OF THE 
ADMINISTRATION OF LORD MELBOURNE. 

[1800-1841.] 

The prosperity which attended Macaulay all through life 
may be said to have begun with the moment of his birth. 
Of all good gifts which it is in the power of fortune to 
bestow, none can surpass the being born of wise, honour- 
able, and tender parents : and this lot fell to him. He 
came of a good stock, though not of the kind most rec- 
ognized by Colleges of Arms. Descended from Scotch 
Presbyterians — ministers many of them — on his fathers 
side, and from a Quaker family on his mother's, he prob- 
ably united as many guarantees of " good birth," in the 
moral sense of the words, as could be found in these 
islands at the beginning of the century. His mother (nee 
Selina Mills) appears to have been a woman of warm- 
hearted and affectionate temper, yet clear-headed and firm 
withal, and with a good eye for the influences which go 
to the formation of character. Though full of a young 
mother's natural pride at the talent and mental precocity 



2 MACAULAY. [chap. 

of her eldest son, the subject of this volume, Thomas 
Babington Macaulay (born October 25, 1800), she was 
wise enough to eschew even the semblance of spoiling. 
The boy found, like many studious children, that' he 
could spend his time with more pleasure, and probably 
with more profit, in reading at home than in lessons at 
school, and consequently exerted daily that passive resist- 
ance against leaving home which many mothers have not 
the strength to overcome. Mrs. Macaulay always met 
appeals grounded on the unfavourableness of the weather 
with the stoical answer : " No, Tom ; if it rains cats and 
dogs you shall go." As a mere infant, his knowledge, 
and his power of working it up into literary form, were 
equally extraordinary. Compositions in prose and verse, 
histories, epics, odes, and hymns flowed with equal free- 
dom, and correctness in point of language, from his facile 
pen. He was regarded, as he well deserved to be, as a 
prodigy, not only by his parents, but by others who 
might be presumed to be less partial critics. Mrs. Han- 
nah More, who in certain circles almost assumed the char- 
acter of a female Dr. Johnson, and director of taste, pro- 
nounced little Macaulay's hymns " quite extraordinary 
for such a baby." The wise mother treasured these 
things in her heart, but carefully shielded her child from 
the corrupting influences of early flattery. " You will be- 
lieve," she writes, " that we never appear to regard any- 
thing he does as anything more than a school-boy's amuse- 
ment." Genuine maternal tenderness, without a trace of 
weak indulgence, seems to have marked this excellent 
woman's treatment of her children. When once he fell 
ill at school, she came and nursed him with such affec- 
tion that years afterwards he referred to the circumstance 
with vivid emotion : 



1.] HIS MOTHER. 8 

" There is nothing I remember with so much pleasure as the time 
when you liursed me at Aspenden. How sick and sleepless and 
weak I was, lying in bed, when I was told that you were come ! How 
well I remember with what an ecstasy of joy I saw that face ap- 
proaching me ! The sound of your voice, the touch of your hand, are 
present to me now, and will be, I trust in God, to my last hour." 

But many a devoted mother could watch by the sick- 
bed of her son for weeks without sleep, who would not 
have tlie courage to keep him up to a high standard of 
literary performance. When he was not yet thirteen she 
wrote to him : ^ 

" I know you write with great ease to yourself, and would rather 
write ten poems than prune one. All your pieces are much mended 
after a little reflection ; therefore, take your solitary walks and think 
over each separate thing. Spare no time or trouble, and render each 
piece as perfect as you can, and then leave the event without one anx- 
ious thought. I have always admired a saying of one of the old hea- 
then philosophers ; when a friend was condoling with him that he so 
well deserved of the gods, and yet they did not shower their favours 
on him as on some others less worthy, he answered, ' I will continue 
to deserve well of them.' So do you, my dearest." 

Deep, sober, clear-eyed love watched over Macaulay's 
childhood. His mother lived long enough to see her son 
on the high-road to honour and fame, and died almost 
immediately after he had made his first great speech on 
the Reform Bill in 1831. 

His father, Zachary, was a man cast in an heroic mould, 
who reproduced, one might surmise, the moral features of 
some stern old Scotch Covenanter among his ancestors, 
and never quite fitted into the age in which it was his lot 
to live. There was n latent faculty in him which, in spite 
of his long and laborious life, he was never able com- 
pletely to unfold. A silent, austere, earnest, patient, en- 
1* 



4 MACAULAY. [chap. 

during man, almost wholly without the gift of speech, and 
the power of uttering the deep, involved thought that was 
in him — a man after Carlyle's own heart, if he could have 
seen anything good in an emancipator of negroes. A 
feeling of respect bordering on reverence is excited by 
the little we know of Macaulay's father — his piety, his 
zeal, his self-sacrifice to the cause to which he devoted his 
mind, body, and estate; even the gloom and moroseness 
of his latter years, all point to a character of finer fibre 
and loftier strain, many might be disposed to think, than 
that of his eloquent and brilliant son. There are parallel 
cases on record of men endowed with over-abundance of 
thought and feeling, for which they never find adequate 
expression, who have had sons in whose case the spell 
which sealed their own lips to silence is broken — sons 
who can find ready utterance for the burden of thought 
which lay imprisoned in their sires, partly because they 
were not overfull, as their fathers were. Diderot was 
such a case. He always said that he was not to be com- 
pared to his father, the cutler of Langres; and declared 
he was never so pleased in his life as when a fellow-towns- 
man said to him, " Ah, M. Diderot, you are a very famous 
man, but you will never be half the man your father was." 
Carlyle always spoke of his father in similar language. 
But the closest analogy to the two Macaulays is that of 
the two Mirabeaus, the crabbed, old " friend of man," 
and the erratic genius, the orator Gabrielle Honore. It 
is certainly " a likeness in unlikeness " of ho common 
kind ; and nothing can be more dissimilar than the two 
pairs of men; -but the similarity of relation of elder to 
younger in the two cases is all the more remarkable. 

In this grave, well-ordered home Macaulay passed a 
happy childhood. He had three brothers and five sisters, 



I.] HIS FATHER. 5 

all his juniors, and for them he always felt a fraternal 
affection which bordered on a passion. His trials, as 
already implied, commenced when he had to leave his 
books, his parents, and his playmates for a distant school 
in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. Time never seems 
to have completely assuaged his home-sickness; and his 
letters to his mother express, in a style of precocious ma- 
turity, the artless yearnings and affectionate grief of a 
child. Nothing more dutiful, tender, and intelligent can 
well be conceived. His second half-year seems to have 
been even ipore painful to bear than the jSrst; his biog- 
rapher will not print the letter he wrote immediately af- 
ter his return to school at the end of the summer holi- 
days — it would be "too cruel." This is the second — 
written two months before he had ended his thirteenth 
year : 

" Shelford, August 14, 1813. 
*' My dear Mamma, — I must confess that I have been a little dis- 
appointed at not receiving a letter from home to-day. I hope, how- 
ever, for one to-morrow. My spirits are far more depressed by leav- 
ing home than they were last half-year. Everything brings home to 
my recollection. Everything I read, or see, or hear brings it to my 
mind. You told me I should be happy when I once came here, but 
not an hour passes in which I do not shed tears at thinking of home. 
Every hope, however unlikely to be reallized, affords me some small 
consolation. The morning on which I went, you told me that possi- 
bly I might come home before the holidays. If you can confirm 
that hope, beheve me when I assure you there is nothing which I 
would not give for one instant's sight of home. Tell me in your 
next, expressly, if you can, whether or no there is any likelihood of 
my coming home before the holidays. If I could gain papa's leave, 
I should select my birthday, October 25, as the time which I should 
wish to spend at that home which absence renders still dearer to 
me. I think 1 see you sitting by papa just after his dinner, reading 
my letter, and turning to him with an inquisitive glance at the end 
of the paragraph. I think, too, that I see his expressive shake of 



6 MACAULAY. [chap. 

the head at it. Oh may I be mistaken ! You cannot conceive what 
an alteration a favorable answer would produce on me. If your ap- 
probation of my request depends upon my advancing in study, I will 
work like a cart-horse. If you should refuse it, you will deprive me 
of the most pleasing illusion which I ever experienced in my life. 
Pray do not fail to write speedily. — Your dutiful and affectionate 
son, T. B. Magaulay." 

The urgent and pathetic appeal was not successful. The 
stern father did shake his head as the boy had feared, and 
the " pleasing illusion" was not realized. 

His school, though a private one, was of a superior kind. 
There he laid the foundation of his future scholarship. 
But what surprises most is, that in the midst of the usually 
engrossing occupation of a diligent school-boy, with his 
Latin, Greek, and mathematics, he found time to gratify 
that insatiable thirst for European literature which he 
retained through life. Before he was fifteen we find him 
recommending his mother to read Boccaccio, at least in 
Dryden's metrical version, and weighing him against 
Chaucer, to whom he " infinitely prefers him." This 
shows, at any rate, that no Puritanic surveillance directed 
his choice of books. The fault seems to have been rather 
the other way, and he enjoyed an excess of liberty, in 
being allowed to indulge almost without • restraint his 
strong partiality for the lighter and more attractive forms 
of literature, to the neglect of austerer studies. Poetry 
and prose fiction remained through life Macaulay's favorite 
reading. And there is no evidence that he at any time 
was ever submitted, by his teachers or himself, to a mental 
discipline of a more bracing kind. His father apparently 
considered that the formation of his son's mind was no 
part of his duty. Engrossed in his crusade against sla- 
very, in which cause " he laboured as men labour for the 



I.] SCHOOL. 7 

lionours of a profession, or for the subsistence of tlieir 
children," he left the mental training of young Macaulay 
to hired teachers — except i-n one particular, which will be 
readily divined. The principles of evangelical religion 
were inculcated with more zeal and persistence than dis- 
cretion. It is the ever-recurring error of old and serious 
minds, to think that the loftier views of life and duty, 
the moral beliefs which they themselves, in the course of 
years, after a long experience, perhaps of a very different 
code of ethics, have acquired, can be transplanted by pre- 
cept, full-grown and vigorous, into the minds of the young. 
The man of fifty, forgetting his own youth, or remember- 
ing it only with horror, wishes his son to think and feel 
and act as he does himself. He should wish him the lan- 
guid pulse and failing vigour of decay at the same time. 
In any case, the attempt to impart " vital religion " to 
Macaulay signally failed, and possibly was the indirect 
cause of the markedly unspiritual tone of his writings, and 
of his resolute silence on questions of ultimate beliefs. 
The son's taste for poetry, novels, and " worldly literature" 
produced a suspicious querulousness in the elder Macaulay, 
which cannot easily be excused. He listened with a too 
indulgent ear to vague complaints against his son's car- 
riage and conversation, demanding answers to the anony- 
mous accusations, in a tone little calculated to inspire sym- 
pathy. It says very much for Macaulay's sweetness of 
character, that he was never soured or estranged from his 
father by this injudicious treatment. On the contrary, he 
remained a loyal and dutiful son, under trials, as we shall 
see, of no common severity. 

In October, 1818, he went as a commoner to Trinity 
College, Cambridge. Neither his taste nor his acquire- 
ments were fitted to win him distinction in the special 



8 MACAULAY. [chap. 

studies of the place. In his boyhood he had shown a 
transient liking for mathematics ; but this had given way 
to an intense repugnance for exact science. " I can 
scarcely bear," he says in a letter to his mother, " to write 
on mathematics, or mathematicians. Oh for words to ex- 
press my abomination of that science, if a name sacred 
to the useful and embellishing arts may be applied to the 
perception and recollection of certain properties in num- 
bers and figures ! Oh that I had to learn astrology, de- 
monology, or school divinity ! . . . Oh to change Cam for 
Isis !" His inclination was wholly for literature. Unfort- 
unately, according to the regulations then in force, a mini- 
mum of honours in mathematics was an indispensable con- 
dition for competing for the Chancellor's medals — the test 
of classical proficiency before the institution of the classi- 
cal tripos. Macaulay failed even to obtain the lowest 
place among the Junior Optimes, and was, what is called 
in University parlance, " gulphed." But he won the prize 
for Latin declamation, he twice gained the Chancellor's 
medals for English verse, and by winning a Craven schol- 
arship he sufficiently proved his classical attainments. 
Why he was not sent to Oxford, as it seems he would 
have preferred, does not appear. Probably religious scruples 
on his father's part had something to do with the choice 
of a University. Otherwise, Oxford would have appeared 
to offer obvious advantages to a young man with his bent. 
His disproportionate partiality for the lighter sides of lit- 
erature met with no corrective at Cambridge. As he 
could not assimilate the mathematical training, he practi- 
cally got very little. The poets, orators, and historians, 
read, with a view chiefly to their language, formed a very 
imperfect discipline for a mind in which fancy and imagi- 
nation rather needed the curb than the spur. A course 



I.] CAMBRIDGE. 9 

of what at Oxford is technically called " science," even as 
then understood, would have been an invaluable gymnas- 
tic for Macaulay, and would Jiave strengthened faculties in 
his mind, which as a matter of fact never received ade- 
quate culture. We shall have repeated occasion in subse- 
quent chapters to notice his want of philosophic grasp, 
his dread and dislike of arduous speculation, his deficient 
courage in facing intellectual problems. It is not .proba- 
ble that any education would have made him a deep and 
vigorous thinker; but we can hardly doubt that a more 
austere training would at least have preserved him from 
some of the errors into which he habitually fell. 

As it was, not Cambridge studies but Cambridge society 
left a mark on his mind. Genial and frank, and with an 
unlimited passion and talent for talk, he made troops of 
friends, and before he left the University had acquired a 
reputation as one of the best conversationists of the day. 
He met his equals in the Coleridges, Hyde and Charles 
Villiers, Romilly, Praed, and in one case his superior in 
verbal dialectics, Charles Austin, of whom Mill in one 
sentence has drawn such a powerful sketch : " The im- 
pression which he gave was that of boundless strength, 
together with talents which, combined with such apparent 
force of will and character, seemed capable of dominating 
the world." Of their wit combats a story is told, which 
slightly savours of mythus, how at Bowood the two Can- 
tabs got engaged in a discussion at breakfast, and such 
was the splendour and copiousness of their talk that the 
whole company in the house, " ladies, artists, politicians, 
diners-out," listened entranced till it was time to dress for 
dinner. It is needless to say that Macaulay shone among 
the brightest in the Union Debating Society. Thus those 
faculties which were naturally strong were made stronger, 



10 MACAULAY. [chap. 

those which were naturally weak received little or no 
exercise. 

After literature, Macaulay's strongest taste was for poli- 
tics. His father's house at Clapham was a common meet- 
ing-ground for politicians engaged in the agitation against 
slavery ; and when yet a boy he had learned to take an 
interest in public affairs. In the free atmosphere of un- 
dergraduate discussion, such an interest is the last which 
is allowed to lie dormant, and Macaulay soon became a 
strenuous politician. Then occurred his single change 
of opinions throughout life. He went up to Cambridge 
a Tory ; Charles Austin soon made him a Whig, or some- 
thing more ; and before his first year of residence at Cam- 
bridge was over, he had to defend himself against the 
exaggerated reports of some tale-bearer who had alarmed 
his parents. He protests that he is not a " son of anarchy 
and confusion," as his mother had been led to believe. 
The particular charge seems to have been that he had 
been " initiated into democratical societies " in the Uni- 
versity, and that he had spoken of the so-called Manches- 
ter massacre in terms of strong indignation. It would 
have said little for his generosity and public spirit if he 
had not. 

It is not easy for us now to realize the condition of 
England in Macaulay's youth. Though so little remote 
in point of time, and though still remembered by old men 
who are yet among us, the state of public affairs between 
the peace of 1815 and the passing of the Reform Bill was 
so unlike anything to which we are accustomed, that a 
certain effort is required to make it present to the mind. 
It is not easy to conceive a state of things in which the 
country was covered by an army of " common informers," 
whose business it was to denounce the non-payment of 



■I.] CONDITIOX OF ENGLAND. U 

taxes, and share with the fisc the onerous fines imposed, 
often without a shadow of justice — in wliich marauders 
roamed at night under the command of "General Ludd," 
and terrorized whole counties — when the Habeas Corpus 
Act was suspended, and "in Suffolk, nightly, fires of in- 
cendiaries began to blaze in every district" — when mobs 
of labourers assembled with flags bearing the motto 
" Bread or Blood," and riots occurred in London, Not- 
tingham, Leicester, and Derby, culminating in the massacre 
at Manchester — when at last the famous Six Acts were 
passed, which surrendered the liberties of Englishmen 
into the hands of the Government. "The old spirit of 
liberty would appear to have departed from England, 
when public meetings could not be held without the 
licence of magistrates, when private houses might be 
searched for arras, when a person convicted a second 
time of publishing a libel"* — that is, a criticism on the 
Government — "might be transported beyond the seas." 
Macaulay had been a year at College when the Six Acts 
were passed (December, 1819). 

Nothing could be more characteristic than the way in 
which Macaulay kept his head in this semi-revolutionary 
condition of public affairs. A man of "strong passions 
would, inevitably, have taken an. extreme side — either for 
reaction or reform. Civil society seemed threatened by 
the anarchists; civil liberty seemed equally threatened 
by the Government. Either extreme Tory or extreme 
Radical opinions would appear to have been the only 
choice for an ardent young spirit — and the latter the more 
suitable to the impetuosity of youth and genius. Macaulay 
took his stand, with the premature prudence and wisdom 
of a veteran, on the judicious compromise of sound Whig 

^ Knight's History of England, vol. viii. cap. 4. 
B 



12 MACAULAY. [chap. 

principles. He was zealous for reform, but never was 
touched by a breath of revolutionary fervour. The grind- 
ing collision of old and new principles of government 
did not set him on fire either vi^ith fear or with hope. 
The menacing invasions on the old system of Church and 
State, which had wrecked the happiness of the last years 
of Burke — which now disturbed the rest of such men as 
Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth — filled him with no dis- 
may. But he was as little caught up by visions of a new 
dawn — of a future " all the brighter that the past was 
base." In the heyday of youth and spirits and talent, he 
took his side with the old and practical Whigs, who were 
well on their guard against " too much zeal," but who saw 
their way to such reforms as could be realized in the con- 
ditions of the time. He was a Whig by necessity of nat- 
ure, by calmness of passion, combined with superlative 
common-sense. 

He did not get a Fellowship till his third and last trial, 
in 1824. He had then already begun to make a name in 
literature. As a Junior Bachelor he competed for the 
Greaves historical prize — " On the Conduct and Character 
of William the Third." The essay is still in existence, 
though only the briefest fragments of it have been pub- 
lished, which are interesting on more grounds than one. 
Not only is the subject the same as that which occupied 
so many years of his later life, but the style is already 
his famous style in all essential features. There is no 
mistaking this : 

" Lewis XIV. was not a great, general. He was not a great legis- 
lator. But he was in one sense of the word a great king. He was 
perfect master of all the mysteries of the science of royalty — of the 
arts which at once extend power and conciliate popularity, which 
most advantageously display the merits and most dexterously con-- 
ceal the deficiencies of a sovereign." 



I.] EARLIEST WRITINGS. 13 

This essay shows that his style was quite natural, and 
unaffected. Whatever may be thought of Macaulay's style 
by the present race of critics, no one will deny that it was 
original, and has left a mark on our literature; like all 
original styles, which give an impression of novelty on 
their first appearance, it was, we see, his spontaneous 
mode of iftterance. The true prose writer, equally with 
the true poet, is born, not made. 

More important were his contributions to Knight's 
Quarterly Magazine. Spirited verse, prose, fiction, and 
criticism on poets, were his first efforts in literature, and 
prove sufficientl}-^, if proof were wanted, in what direction 
his calling lay. Two battle-pieces in metre, Ivry and 
JVaseby, still live, by reason of their vigour and animation, 
and are little, if at all, inferior to his later productions in 
verse. The Fragments of a Roman Tale, and the Scenes 
from the Athenian Revels, are so sparkling and vivacious, 
and show such a natural turn for a dialogue and dramatic 
mise en scene, that it says a great deal for Macaulay's good- 
sense and literary conscientiousness that he remained con- 
tent with this first success, and did not continue to work 
a vein which would have brought him prompt, if ephem- 
eral, popularity. There can be little doubt that he could 
have equalled, or surpassed, most historical novelists who 
have written since Scott. But he had too genuine a love 
of history not to be conscious of the essential hoUowness 
and unreality of the historical novel, and he never meddled 
with it again. Of the two criticisms on Dante and Pe- 
trarch, the first is nearly as good as anythmg Macaulay 
ever wrote in that style (which, to be sure, is not saying 
much, as he was almost incapable of analyzing and exhib- 
iting the beauties in the great creative works which he 
admired so much) ; but its generous enthusiasm and zeal 



14 MACAJJLAY. [chap, 

for the great Florentine, and, indeed, for Italian literature 
generally, are really toucliing, and produce an effect on the 
mind not usually produced by his criticisms. 

But by far the most noteworthy of his contributions 
to Knight's Magazine was the Conversation between Mr. 
Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton^ touching the great 
Civil War. We are told that it was his own decided 
favourite among his earlier efforts in literature ; and most 
correct was his judgment. The introduction to the dia- 
logue, for simplicity and grace, is worthy of Plato : 

*'It chanced in the warm and beautiful spring of the year 1665, 
a little before the saddest summer that ever London saw," begins 
the narrator, *' that I went to the Bowling Green at Piccadilly, 
whither at that time the best gentry made continual resort. There 
I met Mr, Cowley, who had lately left Barmelms. ... I entreated 
him to dine with me at my lodging in the Temple, which he most 
courteously promised. And that so eminent a guest riiight not lack 
better entertainment than cooks or vintners can provide, I sent to the 
house of Mr. John Milton, in the Artillery Walk, to beg that he Avould 
also be my guest, for I hoped that they would think themselves rath, 
er united by their common art than divided by their (different fac- 
tions. And so, indeed, it proved. For while we sat at table they 
talked freely of men and things, as well ancient as modern, with 
much civility. Nay, Mr. Milton, who seldom tasted Avine, both be- 
cause of his singular temperance and because of his gout, did more 
than once pledge Mr. Cowley, who was indeed no hermit in diet. At 
last, being heated, Mr. Milton begged that I would open the windows. 
' Nay,' said I, ' if you desire fresh air and coolness, what would hin- 
der us, as the evening is fair, from sailing for an hour on the river?' 
To this they both cheerfully consented ; and forth we walked, Mr. 
Cowley and I leading Mr. Milton between us to the' Temple Stairs. 
There we took a boat, and thence we were rowed up the river. 

"The wind was pleasant, the evening fine; the sky, the earth, 
and the water beautiful to look upon. But Mr. Cowley and I held 
our peace, and said nothing of tl:ie gay sights around us, lest we 
shqnld too feelingly remind Mr, Milton of his calamity, whereof he' 



I.J COWLEY AND MILTON. 15 

needed no monitor; for soon he said, sadly: 'Ah, Mr. Cowley, you 
are a happy man. What would I now give but for one more look at 
the sun, and the waters, and the gardens of this fair city !' " 

There is reason to think that Macaulay's splendid lit- 
erary faculty was seriously damaged by his early entrance 
into the conflict of party politics, and that he never wholly 
recovered from its effect. It destroyed the tendei* bloom 
of his mind. As Mr. Pattison has shown that even Mil- 
ton, when he turned from Conius and Lycidas to write 
ferocious pamphlets for twenty years, " left behind him 
the golden age, and one-half of his poetic genius,"^ so may 
we say of Macaulay, that when he turned from such work 
as this dialogue to parliamentary debate and the distrac- 
tions of office, he did an injury to his prose, which is none 
the less great and deplorable because it cannot be accurate- 
ly measured. But let any one read this beailtiful piece 
of majestic English, then any passage 'of the History or 
the Essays which he may like best, and say whether let- 
ters have not lost far more than politics have gained by 
Macaulay's entrance into Parliament. The conduct of the 
whole dialogue is. masterly. Both Milton and Cowley 
sustain their parts with admirable propriety. It is no 
sham fight in which one of the interlocutors is a man of 
straw, set up only to be knocked down. The most telling 
arguments on the Royalists' side are put into Cowley's 
mouth, and enunciated with a force which cannot be sur- 
passed. Above all, the splendour and nobility of the dic- 
tion are such as never visited Macaulay's vigils again. 
The piece is hardly ever referred to, and appears to be for- 
gotten. Even his most loyal biographer and kinsman 
waxes cold and doubtful about it. But it remains, and 
will be remembered, as a promise and pledge of literary 

' Milton^ by Mark Pattison, in this series. 



16 MACAULAY. [chap. 

power which adverse fate hindered him from fully re- 
deeming. 

Macaulay's early success in literature did not improve 
his relations with his father. On the contrary, lie appears 
to have been chidden for everything he wrote. The 
ground of complaint was not far to seek : the magazine in 
which he wrote was a worldly periodical, in which the 
interests of religion were neglected or offended. The 
sympathies of most readers will be so strongly in favour 
of the son, that we cannot do wrong in casting a look of 
forlorn commiseration on the old Puritan, who felt, with 
an anguish perhaps never fully expressed, the conviction 
and the proof growing on him that his son's heart was 
not as his heart, and that they were parting company 
as regards the deepest subjects more and more. When 
Macaulay was a lad at school his father had written to 
him : " I do long and pray most earnestly that the orna- 
ment of a meek and quiet spirit may be substituted for 
vehemence and self-confidence." The good rnan's hopes 
and prayers had not been realized, nor was his treatment 
of his son such that their realization could be expected. 
But the sense of void and inner bereavement would be 
none the less bitter and strange, even if the faults of treat- 
ment were perceived when it was too late to rectify them, 
and of this feeling on the father's part there is no evidence. 
In any case, on no occasion in life did Macaulay show the 
generosity and tenderness of his nature more admirably 
than in these seasons of trial and failing sympathy with 
his father. Troubles without were added to troubles 
within. When he went to Cambridge his father seemed 
in prosperous fortune which bordered on affluence. It was 
understood that he was to be " made in a modest way an. 
eldest son." But a great change had come over Zachary 



I.] DOMESTIC TRIALS. 17 

Macaulay's neglected business. The firm wanted a com- 
petent head. The elder partner gave his mind, his time, 
and his cneriry to the agitation asfainst the slave-trade. 
The junior partner, Babington, was not a man to supply 
his place. Like Cobden, many years afterwards, the elder 
Macaulay neglected his private affairs for public interests, 
and he quietly slid down the road which leads to com- 
mercial ruin. Then the son showed the sterling stuff of 
which he was made. He received the first ill-news at 
Cambridge with " a frolick welcome " of courage and 
filial devotion. " He was firmly prepared," he said, " to 
encounter the worst with fortitude, and to do his utmost 
to retrieve it by exertion." A promise kept to the letter 
and to the spirit. Not only did he, with the help of his 
brother Henry, pay off ultimately his father's debts, but 
he became a second father to his brothers and sisters. 

" He quietly took up the burden which his father was unable to 
bear; and before many years had elapsed the fortunes of all for 
whose welfare he considered himself responsible were abundantly 
secured. In the course of the efforts which he expended on the ac- 
complishment of this result, he unlearned the very notion of framing 
his method of life with a view to his own pleasure ; and such was 
his high and simple nature, that it may well be doubted whether it 
ever crossed his mind that to live wholly for others was a sacrifice 
at all."» 

This was much, and inexpressibly noble ; but even this 
was not all. Not only did Macanlay not give a thought 
to his own frustrated hopes and prospects; not only did 
he, a young man, shoulder the burden of a family two 
generations deep, but he did it with the sunniest radiance, 
as if not a care rankled in his heart. His sister. Lady 
Trevelyan, says that those who did not know him then 

* Trevelyan, vol. i. cap. 3. 



18 MACAULAY. ^ [chap. 

" never knew liim in liis most brilliant, witty, and fertile 
vein." He was life and sunshine to young and old in the 
sombre house in Great Ormond Street, where the forlorn 
old father like a blighted oak lingered on in leafless decay, 
reading one long sermon to his family on Sunday after- 
noons, and another long sermon on Sunday evenings — 
" where Sunday walking for walking's sake was never al- 
lowed, and even going to a distant church was discour- 
aged." Through this Puritanic gloom Macaulay shot like 
a sunbeam, and turned it into a fairy scene of innocent 
laughter and mirth. Against Macaulay the author severe 
things, and as just as severe, may be said ; but as to his con- 
duct in his own home — as a son, as a brother, and an un- 
dent is only the barest justice to say that he appears to 
have touched the furthest verge of human virtue, sweet- 
ness, and generosity. His thinking was often, if not gen- 
erally, pitched in what we must call a low key, but his 
action might put the very saints to shame. He reversed a 
practice too common among men of genius, who are often; 
careful to display all their shining and attractive qualities 
to the outside world, and keep for home consumption their 
meanness, selfishness, and ill-temper. Macaulay struck no 
heroic attitude of benevolence, magnanimity, and aspira- 
tion before the world — rather the opposite.; but in the- 
circle of his home affections he practised those virtues 
without letting his right hand know what was done by 
his left. 

He was called to the Bar in .1826, and went more than 
once on the Northern Circuit. But he did not take kindly 
to the law, got little or no practice, and soon renounced 
all serious thoughts of the legal profession, even if he ever 
entertained any. He had, indeed, in the mean time found 
something a great deal better to do. In October, 1824, 



1.] ENTERS PARLIAMENT. 19 

writing to bis father, he said : " When I see you in London 
I will mention to you a piece of secret history," which he 
conceals for the moment. .This referred to an invitation 
to write for the Edinburgh Revieiv ; and in the following 
August, 1825, appeared an article on Milton, which at once 
arrested the attention of the public, and convinced the 
shrewder judges that a new force had arisen in literature. 
The success was splendid and decisive, and produced a 
great peal of fame. He followed it up with rapid energy,' 
and with his single hand gave a new life to the Edinhurgh 
Revieio. He was already distinguished even in the select 
circle of promising young men. In 1828 Lord Lyndhurst 
made him a Commissioner of Bankruptcy. In 1830 his 
articles on Mill had so struck Lord Lansdowne that he 
offered him, though quite a stranger, a seat in Parlia- 
ment for the borough of Calne. 

He was now thirty years old. IJe was a finished 
classical scholar, and a master of English and Italian liter- 
ature. French literature he, no doubt, knew well, but not 
with the saiTie intimacy and sympathy. Of English his- 
tory he already possessed the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries with rare accuracy and grasp. And of all his- 
tory, ancient or modern, he probably had a competent 
command. On the other hand, his want of philosophical 
training does not appear to have been corrected by subse- 
quent studies of a severer kind. All higher speculation 
seems to have been antipathetic to him. He spoke with 
respect of Bentham, but there is no evidence that he ever 
assimilated Bentham's doctrines. He admired Coleridge's 
poetry, but he did not meddle with his philosophy — which 
certainly was not very much, but still it was the best rep- 
resentative of speculative thought in England, and full of 
attraction to ardent young minds. In after-years, when 
2 



20 MACAULAY. [ghap. 

Macaulay ventured to handle religious and philosophical 
subjects of a certain depth, this defect in his education 
made itself felt very plainly. But for the present, and for 
some time after, it was not perceived. He was abundant- 
ly well prepared by natural acuteness and wide reading to 
make more than a creditable figure amid the loose talk 
and looser thinking which are the ordinary staple of poli- 
tics, and to politics he had now come in earnest. 

Entering Parliament a few months before the death of 
George IV., he was just in time to witness the great bat- 
tle of Reform fought out from beginning to end ; to take, 
indeed, a conspicuous and honourable share in the cam- 
paign and final victory./ His first speech on the Reform 
Bill placed him in the front rank of orators, if not of de- 
baters. The Speaker sent for him, and " told him that in 
all his prolonged experience he had never seen the House 
in such a state of excitement."' Sir Robert Peel paid 
him a most handsome compliment ; and another member 
was heard to say that he had not heard such speaking 
since Fox. There can, indeed, be no doubt about the im- 
pressiveness and weight of Macaulay's speaking. " When- 
ever he rose to speak," says Mr. Gladstone, who sat with 
him in Parliament nearly from the first, "it was a sum- 
mons like a trumpet-call to fill the benches." It may well 
be questioned whether Macaulay was so well endowed for 
any career as that of a great orator. The rapidity of 
speech suited the impetuosity of his genius far better than 
the slow labour of composition. He has the, true Demos- 
thenic rush in which argument becomes incandescent with 
passion. To read his speeches by themselves, isolated 
from the debate in which they were delivered, is to do 
them injustice. It is only when we read them in Hansard 
^ Trevelyan, vol. i. cap. 4. 



I.J SPEECH ON REFORM. 21 

or other contemporary reports that we see how far higher 
was their plane of thought than that of the best speaking 
to which they were opposed, or even to that on his own 
side. It is not going too far to say that he places the 
question on loftier grounds of state policy than any of his 
colleagues. In his fourth speech on the Reform Bill, 
brushing away with disdain the minuter sophistries and 
special pleading of his opponents, he tells them that the 
Bill must be carried or the country will be ruined — that 
it will be carried, whatever they do, but carried by revolu- 
tion and civil war. " You may make the change tedious, 
you may make it violent, you may — God in his mercy- 
forbid — you may make it bloody, but avert it you can- 
not." Even if it were a bad bill, it should be passed, as 
the less of two evils, compared to withholding it. Then 
he throws those harpoons of pointed epigram, which are 
rarely at the command of orators who s^e not also writers, 
and which are as wise and true as they are sharp : 

" What, then, it is said, would you legislate in haste ? Would you 
legislate in times of great excitement concerning matters of such 
deep concern ? Yes, Sir, I would ; and if any bad consequences 
should follow from the haste and excitement, let those be answera- 
ble who, when there was no need of haste, when there existed no 
excitement, refused to listen to any project of reform ; nay, made it 
an argument against reform that the public mind was not excited. . . . 
I allow that hasty legislation is an evil. But reformers are compelled 
to legislate fast\ just because bigots will not legislate early. Reformers 
are compelled to legislate in times of excitement, because bigots will 
not legislate in times of tranquillity." 

Nothing shows more clearly the impression made by 
this magnificent speech than the pains taken by the Op- 
position to answer it. Croker, who rose immediately after 
Macaulay sat down, devoted a two hours' speech exclusive- 



22 MACAULAY. [chap. 

ly to answering him ; and Croker was one of the ablest 
debaters of his party. All the best men on that side fol- 
lowed the same line, feeling that Macaulay was really the 
formidable man. Sir Robert Inglis, Sir Charles Wether- 
ell, Praed, and, finally, the Ajax of the Tories, Sir Robert 
Peel himself, singled ont the " honourable and learned 
member" for Calne as the foeman most worthy of their 
steel. No compliment could surpass this. 

From the time he entered Parliament till nearly four 
years afterwards, when he sailed for India, Macaulay's 
life was one of strenuous and incessant labour, such as 
has been hardly ever surpassed in the lives of the busiest 
men. Besides his Parliamentary duties he had official 
work — first as Commissioner, and then as Secretary to the 
Board of Control ; and in consequence of the frequent 
indisposition of his chief, Mr. Charles Grant, the whole 
labour of the office often devolved upon him. He was 
one of the lions of London Society, and a constant guest 
at Holland House — the imperious mistress of which 
scolded, flattered, and caressed him with a patronizing 
condescension that would not have been to every per- 
son's taste. He was on intimate terms with Rogers, 
Moore, Campbell, Luttrel, and the other wits of the day, 
and he more than held his own as a talker and a wit. 
And all this time he was writing those articles for the 
Edinburgh Review which, perhaps, are often unwittingly 
assumed to have been his main occupation. They were, 
in truth, struck off in hastily snatched moments of leisure, 
saved with a miserly thrift from public and official work, 
by rising at five and writing till breakfast. Thirteen 
articles, from the Essay on Robert Montgomery to the 
first Essay on Lord Chatham, inclusive, were written 
amidst these adverse conditions. We are bound in com- 



f] CAPACITY FOR WORK. 23 

mon equity to remember this fact, when inclined to find 
fault with either the matter or the manner of Macaulay's 
Essays. They were not the meditated compositions of a 
student wooing his muse in solitude and repose, crooning 
over his style and maturing his thought; but the rapid 
effusions of a man immersed in business, contesting popu- 
lous boroughs, sitting up half the night in Parliament, 
passing estimates connected with his office, and making 
speeches on la haute politique to the Commons of Eng- 
land. Mr. Gladstone, who remembers the splendour of 
liis early fame, does justice to the " immense distinction " 
which Macaulay bad attained long before middle life, and 
justly remarks that, except the second Pitt and Lord 
Byron, no Englishman had ever won, at so early an age, 
such wide and honourable renown. 

And behind this renown, unknown to the world, but 
more honourable than the renown itself, were facts which 
must for ever embalm Macaulay^s memory with a fragrance 
of lofty and unselfish virtue. The Whig Government, bent 
on economy, brought in a bill to reform the Bankruptcy 
jurisdiction. He voted for the measure, though it sup- 
pressed his Commissionership, and left him penniless ; for 
at about the time his Trinity Fellowship also expired. He 
was reduced to such straits that he was forced to sell the 
gold medals he had won at Cambridge ; and, as he said 
at a later date, he did not know where to turn for a morsel 
of bread. This did not last long, and his appointment to 
the Board of Control placed him in relative comfort. But 
presently a new difficulty arose. The Government intro- 
duced their Slavery Bill ; which, though a liberal proposal, 
did not satisfy the fanatics of the abolitionist party, among 
whom Zachary Macaulay stood in the first rank. His son 
made up his mind in a moment. He declared to his 



24 MACAULAY. [chap. 

colleagues and his chiefs that he could not go counter 
to his father. " He has devoted his whole life to the 
question ; and I cannot grieve him by giving way, when 
he wishes me to stand firm." He placed his resignation 
in the hands of Lord Althorp, and freely criticized as an 
independent member the measure of his own Govern- 
ment. He told his leader that he did not expect such 
insubordination to be overlooked ; and that if he were a 
Minister he would not allow it. Such noble independence 
had its reward. He wrote to his sister Hannah : " I have 
resigned my office, and my resignation has been refused. 
I have spoken and voted against the Ministry under which 
I hold my place. ... I am as good friends with the Min- 
isters as ever." Well might Sydney Smith say that 
Macaulay was incorruptible. 

Still, the res angusta domi was pressing hard upon, not 
so much himself as his family, of which he was now the 
main support. With his official salary, a;nd with what 
he earned by writing for the Edinburgh — which, by the 
way, never seems to have exceeded two hundred pounds 
per annum — he was beyond the pressure of immediate 
want. If he had been out of office and at leisure, he, no 
doubt, would have gained far more by his pen. But, as he 
pointedly put it, he was resolved to write only because his 
mind was full — not because his pockets were empty. He 
accepted the post of legal adviser to the Supreme Council 
of India, from which he was sure to return with some 
twenty thousand pounds, saved out of his salary. In his 
position it is difficult, even judging after the event, to say 
that he could have acted more wisely and prudently than 
he did. But the sacrifice was great — and probably he 
knew it as well as any one, though, with his usual cheery 
stoicism, he said nothing about it. The exile from Eng- 



i.J SAILS FOR INDIA. 25 

land, and even removal from English politics, were prob- 
ably a gain. But the postponement of his monumen- 
tal work in literature was a serious misfortune. The 
precious hours of health and vigour were speeding away, 
and the great work was not begun, nor near beginning. 
lie sailed for Madras, February 15, 1834. 

He spent the time during his voyage in a very charac- 
teristic manner — by reading all the way. " Except at 
meals," he said, " I hardly exchanged a word with any 
human being. I devoured Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, 
French, and English ; folios, quartos, octavos, duodecimos." 
He always had an immoderate passion for reading, on 
which he never seems to have thought of putting the 
slightest restraint. When in India he writes to his sister, 
Mrs. Cropper, saying that he would like nothing so well as 
to bury himself in some great library, and never pass a 
waking hour without a book before him. And as a mat- 
ter of fact, except when engaged in business or composi- 
tion, this seems to have been what he actually did. He 
walked about London, reading ; he roamed through the 
lanes of Surrey, reading; and even the new and surprising 
spectacle of the sea: — so suggestive of reverie and brood- 
ing thought — could not seduce him from his books. His 
appetite was so keen as to be almost undiscrirainating. 
He was constantly reading worthless novels which he de- 
spised. Once he is shocked himself, and exclaims in his 
diary : " Why do I read such trash ?" One would almost 
say that his mind was naturally vacant when left to itself, 
and needed the thoughts of others to fill up the void. 
How otherwise are we to account for the following ex- 
traordinary statement, under his own hand ? He w^as on a 
journey to Ireland : 



26 MACAULAY. [chak 

" I read between London and Bangor the lives of the emperors 
from Maximin to Carinus, inclusive, in the Augustan history. . . . 
We sailed as soon as we got on board. I put on my great-coat and 
sat on deck during the whole voyage. As T could not read, 1 used 
an excellent substitute for reading. I went through Paradise Lost 
in my head. I could still repeat half of it, and that the best half." 

The complaint is that Macaiilay's writings lack medita- 
tion and thoughtfulness. Can it be wondered at, when 
we see the way in which he passed his leisure hours ? One 
would have supposed that an historian and statesman, sail- 
ing for Ireland in the night on that Irish sea, would have 
been visited by thoughts too full and bitter and mournful 
to have left him any taste even for the splendours of Mil- 
tori's verse. He was about to write on Ireland and the 
battle of the Boyne ; and he had got up the subject with 
his usual care before starting. Is it not next to incredi- 
ble that he could have thought of anything else than that, 
pathetic, miserable, humiliating story of the connexion be- 
tween the two islands? And he knew that story better 
than most men. Yet it did not kindle his mind on such 
an occasion as this. There was a defect of deep sensi- 
bility in Macaulay — a want of moral draught and earnest- 
ness, which is characteristic of his writing and thinking. 
His acute intellect and nimble fancy are not paired with 
an emotional endowment of corresponding weight and 
volume. His endless and aimless reading was the effect, 
not the c»use, of this disposition. While in India he 
read more classics in one year than a Cambridge under- 
graduate who was preparing to compete for the Chan- 
cellor's medals.^ But this incessant reading was directed 

' " I have cast up my reading account, and brought it to the end 
of 1835. It includes December, 1834. During the last thirteen 
months I have read J^schylus twice, Sophocles twice, Euripides once, 



I J EXCESSIVE READING. 27 

by no aim, to no purpose — was prompted by no idea on 
which he wished to throw light, no thoughtful conception 
which needed to be verified and tested. Macaulay's om- 
nivorous reading is often referred to as if it were a title 
to honour f it was far more of the nature of a defect. It 
is, by-the-way, a curious circumstance, that while on the 
one hand we are always told of his extraordinary mem- 
ory, insomuch that he only needed to read a passage even 
once casually for it to be impressed on his mind for ever 
afterwards, on the other we find that he read the same 
books over and over again, and that at very short intervals. 
In the reading account just given we see that he read 
several authors twice in one year. But I happen to pos- 
sess a copy of Lysias, which belonged to liiin, which shows 
that he carried the practice much further. He had the 
excellent habit of marking in pencil the date of his last 
perusal of an author, and in the book referred to it ap- 
pears that he read the speech Pro Caede Eratosthenis 
three times within a year, and five times altogether; and 
with most of the speeches it was the same, though that 
one appears to have been his favourite. In September 
and October, 1837, he appears to have read all Lysias 
through twice over. Now, what could be the meaning 
or the motive of these repeated perusals? In the case of 

Pindar twice, Calliraachus, Apollonius Rhodius, Quintus Calaber, The- 
ocritus twice, Herodotus, Thucydides, almost all Xenophon's works, 
almost all Plato, Aristotle's Politics, and a good deal of his Organon, 
besides dipping elsewhere in him; the whole of Plutarch's Lives, 
about half of Lucian, two or three books of Athenaeus, Plautus twice, 
Terence twice, Lucretius twice, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Lucan, 
Statius, Silius Italicus, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Sallust, Ceesar, and 
lastly Cicero. I have, indeed, still a little of Cicero left, but I shall 
finish him in a few days. I am now deep in Aristophanes and 
Lucian." 

C 2* 



28 MACAULAY. [chap. 

a man with a wretched memory, who was about to under- 
go an examination, we could understand them. But Ma- 
caulay's memory bordered on the miraculous, and he only 
read to please himself. It seems very strange that a se- 
rious man should thus dispose of his spare moments. 
How dry the inward spring of meditation must have 
been to rerr^otely allow of such an employment of time ! 
That a finished scholar, however busy, should now and 
then solace himself with a Greek play or a few books of 
Homer, would only show that he had kept open the win- 
dows of his mind, and had not succumbed to the dusty 
drudgery of life. But this was not Macaulay's case. 
He read with the ardour of a professor compiling a lexi- 
con, without a professor's object or valid motive. He 
wanted a due sense of the relative importance of books 
and studies. 

It behooves a critic to be cautious in finding fault with 
Macaulay, as generally he will discover that^ before he has 
done blaming him for one thing, he has to begin praising 
him warmly for another. His career in India is an in- 
stance in point. However excessive his taste for reading 
may have been, he never allowed that or any other pri- 
vate inclination to interfere with the practical work which 
lay before him. In Calcutta, as in London, he showed 
the same power of strenuous, unremitting labour, which 
never seemed to know satiety or fatigue. Besides his 
oflBcial duties as Member of Council, he at once assumed, 
voluntarily and gratuitously, an enormous addition to his 
burden of work by becoming chairman of two important 
committees: the Committee of Public Instruction and 
the committee appointed to draw up the new codes — the 
Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure. He 
rarely failed to arrogate to himself the lion's share of 



i] INDIAN PENAL CODE. 29 

any hard work witliiii liis reach. But on this occasion, 
owing to the frequent illness of his colleagues, he had at 
times to undertake the greater part of the task himself. 
The Penal Code and the notes appended to it arc, per- 
haps, one M his most durable titles to fame. On such a 
subject I can have no opinion ; but this is the way in 
which Mr. Justice Stephen speaks of it : 

" Lord. Macaulay's great work was too daring and original to be 
accepted at once. It was a draft when he left India in 1838. The 
draft . . . and the revision (by Sir Barnes Peacock) are both eminent- 
ly creditable to their authors, and the result of their successive ef- 
forts has been to rep^-oduce in a concise and even beautiful form the 
spirit of the law of England. . . . The point which always has sur- 
prised me most in connexion with the Penal Code is, that it proves 
that Lord Macaulay must have had a knowledge of English criminal 
law which, considering how little he had practised it, may fairly be 
called extraordinary. He must have possessed the gift of going at 
once to the very root of the matter, and of sifting the corn from the 
chaff, to a most unusual degree, for liis draft gives the substance of 
the criminal law of England, down to its minute working details, in 
a compass which by comparison with the original may be regarded 
as almost ludicrously small. The Indian Penal Code is to the Eng- 
lish criminal law what. a manufactured article ready for use is to the 
materials out of Avhich it is made. It is to the French Code Penal, 
and I may add the North German Code of 1871, what a finished pict- 
ure is to a sketch. It is far simpler and much better expressed than 
Livingstone's Code of Louisiana, and its practical success has been 
complete. The clearest proof of this is, that hardly any questions 
have arisen upon it which have had to be determined by the Courts, 
and that few and slight amendments have had to be made by the 
Legislature."* 

* Trevelyan^ vol. i. cap. 6. Macaulay's labours on the Penal Code, 
the value of which no one disputes, are sometimes spoken of in a 
way which involves considerable injustice to his fellow-commissioners, 
whose important share in the work is tacitly ignored. The Penal 



30 MACAULAY. [chap. 

On the Education Committee he rendered, perhaps, 
equal service, though it may not be so generally known. 
The members of the Board were evenly divided as to the 
character of the instruction to be given to the natives. 
Five were for continuing the old encouragement of Orien- 
tal learning, and five for the introduction of English liter- 
ature and European science. It is hardly necessary to 
say into which scale Macaulay threw his influence. The 
opinion of the Government was determined by an elaborate 
minute which he drew up on the subject, and Lord Wil- 
liam Bentinck decided that " the great object of the British 
Government ought to be the promotion of European liter- 
ature and science among the natives of India." 

Macaulay was very unpopular with a portion of the 
English residents in Calcutta, chiefly, it would seem, in 
consequence of a useful reform which he helped to intro- 
duce, affecting the jurisdiction of the provincial courts of 

Code, together with the Report and Notes, are often referred to as if 
they were Macaulay's exclusive work. For this assumption there is 
no ground, and Macaulay himself never laid claim to anything of the 
kind. When the illness of his colleagues deprived him temporarily 
of their assistance he naturally mentioned the fact in his familiar 
correspondence ; but this does not justify the conclusion that he did 
all the work himself. Serious as were the interruptions caused by 
the illness of the other commissioners, they were the exceptions, not 
the rule. Before the rainy season of the year 1836 the Commission 
had been in full work for a whole year, and nothing is said as to 
sickness during all that time. Moreover, even when suffering from 
bad health. Sir John Macleod maintained on the subject of their joint 
labours daily communication with Macaulay, who' submitted all he 
wrote to the criticism of his friend, and repeated modifications of the 
first draft were the result. This being so, it is not easy to see the 
equity of calling the Penal Code " Macaulay's great work," as Sir 
James Stephen does, or why the Report and Notes should appear in 
the Library edition of Macaulay's writings. 



1.] UNDESERVED ATTACKS. 31 

Bengal. Tlie change appears to have been a wise one, 
and generally accepted as such. But it was unfavourable 
to certain interests in the capital, and these attacked 
Macaulay in the Press with the most scurrilous and in- 
decent viruJencc. The foulness of the abuse was such 
that he could not allow the papers to lie in his sister's 
drawing-room. Cheat, svyindler, charlatan, and tyrant 
were only the milder epithets with which he was assailed, 
and a suggestion to lynch him made at a public meeting 
was received with rapturous applause. He bore this dis- 
graceful vituperation with the most unruffled equanimity. 
lie did more: he vigorously advocated and supported the 
freedom of the Press at the very moment when it was at- 
tacking him with the most rancorous invective. Macaulay 
had in him a vein of genuine magnanimity. 

His period of exile in India drew to its close at the end 
of the year 1837. In the midst of his official work and 
multifarious reading he had written two articles for the 
Edinhurgh Review, one on Mackintosh's History of the 
Revolution ; the other his rather too famous Essay on 
Bacon, He made his plans for learning German on the 
voyage home. " People tell me that it is a hard language," 
he wrote to his friend Ellis, " but I cannot easily believe 
that there is a language which I, cannot master in four 
months by working ten hours a day." He did learn 
German in the time prescribed ; but, except to read 
Goethe and Schiller and parts of Lessing, he never seems 
to have made much use of it. However, his object in 
going to India was now attained. He had realized a 
modest fortune, but ample for his simple wants and tastes. 
After an unusually long voyage he reached England in 
the middle of the year 1838. His father had died while 
he was on the ocean. 



32 MACAULAY. [chap. 

Within a few weeks he had contributed to the Edin- 
burgh Review one of the best of his essays, that on Sir 
Wiliiam Temple. In October he left England for a tour 
in Italy. 

The first visit to Italy is always an epoch in the life of 
a cultivated mind. Probably few pilgrims to the classic 
land were ever better prepared than Macaulay by reading 
and turn of thought to receive the unique impressions of 
such a journey. He was equally capable of. appreciating 
both the antiquities, the Pagan and the Christian, of which 
Italy is the guardian. Fortunately, he kept a journal of 
his travels, from which a few extracts have been published. 
They show Macaulay in his most attractive and engaging 
mood. A want of reverence for the men of genius of 
past ages is not one of the sins which lie at his door. 
On the contrary, after family affection it was perhaps the 
strongest emotion of his mind. He now had an oppor- 
tunity of indulging it such as he had never had before. 
Here are a few extracts from his journal : 

'•'■ Florence^ November 9, 1838. — To the Church of Santa Croce — 
an ugly, mean outside, and not much to admire in the architecture 
within " (shade of Mr. Ruskin !), " but consecrated by the dust of 
some of the greatest men that ever lived. It was to me what a first 
visit to Westminster Abbey would be to an American. The first 
tomb that caught my eye as I entered was that of Michael Angelo. 
I was much moved, and still more so when, going forward, I saw the 
stately monument lately erected to Dante. The figure of the poet 
seemed to me fine, and finely placed, and the inscription very happy 
— his own words — the proclamation which resounds through the 
shades when Virgil returns : 

' Onorate I'altissimo poeta.' 

The two allegorical figures were not much to my taste. It is partic- 
ularly absurd to represent Poetry weeping for Dante. . . . Yet I was 
very near shedding tears of a different kind as I looked at this mag- 



1.] ROME. 33 

nificent monument, and thought of the sufferings of the great poet, 
and of his incomparable genius, and of all the pleasure which I have 
derived from him, and of his death in exile, and of the late justice 
of posterity. I believe that very few people have ever had their 
minds more thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of any great work 
than mine is with that of the Divine Comedy. His execution I take 
to be far beyond that of any other artist who has operated on the 
imagination by means of words — 

' degli altri poeti onore e lume, 
Vagliami il lungo studio e '1 grande amore 
Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.' 

I was proud to think that I had a right to apostrophize him thus. I 
went on, and next I came to the tomb of Alfieri. I passed forward, 
and in another minute my foot was on the grave of Machiavel." 

At Rome he is almost overpowered. 

^'■November 18. — On arriving this morning I walked straight from 
the hotel door to St. Peter's. I was so excited by the expectation 
of what I was to see that I could notice nothing else. I was quite 
nervous. The colonnade in front is noble — very, very noble ; yet it 
disappointed me, and would have done so had it been the portico of 
Paradise. In I went. I was for a minute fairly stunned by the 
magnificence and harmony of the interior. I never in my life saw, 
and never, I suppose, shall see again, anything so astonishingly beau- 
tiful. I really could have cried with pleasure. I rambled about for 
half an hour or more, paying little or no attention to details, but 
enjoying the effect of the sublime whole. 

" In rambling back to the Piazza di Spagna I found myself before 
the portico of the Pantheon. I was as much struck and affected as 
if I had not known that there was such a building in Rome. There 
it was, the work of the age of Augustus — the work of men who lived 
with Cicero and Caesar, and Horace and Virgil." 

He never seems to have felt annoyed, as some have 
been, by the intermingling of Christian and Pagan Rome, 
and is at a loss to say which interested him most. He 
was already meditating his essay on the history of the 



34 MACAULAY. [chap. 

Popes, and throwing into liis Lays of Ancient Rome those 
geographical and topographical touches which set his 
spirited stanzas ringing in the ear of a traveller in Rome 
at every turn. 

" I then went to the river, to the spot where the old Pons Sublicius 
stood, and looked about to see how my Horatius agreed with the topog- 
raphy. Pretty well ; but his house must be on Mount Palatine, for 
he could never see Mount Coelius from the spot where he fought." 

But, like all active minds to whom hard work has be- 
come a habit, Macaulay soon, grew weary of the idleness 
of travelling. He never went further south than Naples, 
and turned away from the Campagna, leaving the delights 
of an Italian spring untasted, to seek his labour and his 
books at home. He reached London early in February, 
1839, and fell to work with the eager appetite of a man 
who has had a long fast. In less than three weeks he 
had read and reviewed Mr. Gladstone's book on Church 
and State. But he w^as not destined to enjoy his leisure 
long. The expiring Whig Ministry of Lord Melbourne 
needed all the support they could obtain : he was brought 
into Parliament as member for Edinburgh, and soon after 
admitted into the Cabinet as Secretary-at-War. 

This retui'u to office and Parliament wjis an uncom- 
pensated loss to literature, and no gain _ to .politics. The 
Whig Ministry was past saving ; and Macaulay could 
gain no distinction by fighting their desperate battle. He 
felt himself that he was wasting his time. " I pine," 
he wrote, " for liberty and ease, and freedom of speech 
and freedom of pen." For this political interlude had 
necessitated the laying aside of his History, which he had 
already begun. He had now reached an age at which an 
author who meditates a arreat work has no time to lose. 



I.] HIS HISTORY. 35 

He was just turned forty; a judicious economy of bis time 
and resources would have seen him a long way towards 
the performance of the promise with which his great work 
opens — " I purpose to write tlie Iiistory of England from 
the accession of King James II. down to a time which is 
within the memory of men still living." It is impossible 
to read the forecast lie made of his work on the eve of 
his journey to Italy without a pang of regret, and sense of 
a loss not easily estimated. 

"As soon as I return I shall seriously commence my History. 
Tlie first part (which I think will take up five octavo volumes) will 
extend from the Re%;pIution to the commencement of Sir Robert 
Walpole's long administration — a period of three or four and thirty 
very eventful years. From the commencement of Walpole's admin- 
istration to the commencement of the American war, events may be 
despatched more concisely. From the commencement of the Ameri- 
can war it will again become necessary to be copious. How far I 
shall bring the narrative down I have not determined. The death 
of George IV. would be the best halting place." 

It was all in his mind. He had gone over the ground 
again and again. What a panorama he would have 
unfolded ! what battle-pieces we should have had of Marl- 
borough's campaigns! what portraits of Bolingbroke, Pe- 
terborough, Prince Eugene, and the rest ! It is a sad pity 
that Lord Melbourne, who was fond of letting things 
alone, could not leave Macaulay alone, but must needs 
yoke the celestial steed to his parliamentary plough. Or, 
to put it more fairly, it is a pity that Macaulay himself 
had not sufficient nerve, and consciousness of his mission, 
to resist the tempter. But he was loyal to a degree of 
chivalry to his political friends who were in difficulties. 
He was, as his sister's writing-master said, a "lump of 
good - nature ;" and, without a full consciousness of the 



36 MACAULAY. [chap. 

sacrifice he was making, he gave up to party what was 
meant for literature. 

But he had a parliamentary triumph of no common 
kind — one of the two instances in which, as Mr. Gladstone 
says, " he arrested the successful progress of legislative 
measures, and slew them at a moment's notice, and by his 
single arm." The case was Serjeant Talfourd's Copy- 
right Bill. His conduct on this occasion has been 
strangely questioned by Miss Martineau, who wonders 
how an able literary man could utter such a speech, and 
hints " at some cause which could not be alleged for such 
a man exposing himself in a speech unsound in its whole 
argument." In any case, Macaulay had much more to 
lose by the line he took than Miss Martineau. No 
one, we may suppose at present, can read the oration in 
question without entire conviction of the single-minded 
sense of duty and elevated public spirit which animated 
him on this occasion. Nothing can be more judicial than 
the way in which he balances the respective claims to 
consideration of authors and the general public. In the 
following year he had a similar victory over Lord Mahon ; 
and the present law of copyright was framed in accordance 
with his proposals, slightly modified. Macaulay made a 
most advantageous contrast to his brother authors in this 
matter. Even the " writer of books " who petitioned 
from Chelsea showed that he had considered the subject 
to much less purpose. 

Lord Melbourne's Government fell in June, 1841; and 
the general election which followed gave .the Tories a 
crushing majority. Macaulay was freed from "that close^ 
ly watched slavery which is mocked with the name of 
power." He welcomed the change with exuberant de- 
light. He still retained his seat for Edinburgh, and spoke 



I.] COPYRIGHT BILL. 3V 

occasionally in tlic House ; but he was liberated from the 
wasteful drudgery of office. 

Here it will be well to interrupt this personal sketch of 
the writer, and proceed to a consideration of some of his 
work. But, for the purpose of making clear some allu- 
sions in the* two following chapters, we may state in antici- 
pation that he had a serious attack of illness in the year 
1852, from which he never entirely recovered. 



CHAPTER IL 

CHARACTERISTICS. 

Macaulay belongs to a class of writers whom critics do 
not always approach with sufficient circumspection and 
diffidence — the class, namely, of writers whose merits and 
defects appear to be so obvious that there is no mistaking 
them. When dealing with writers of this kind, we are 
apt to think our task much easier and simpler than it real- 
ly is. Writers of startling originality and depth, difficult 
as it may be to appraise thera justly, yet, as it were, warn 
critics to be on their guard and take their utmost pains. 
Lesser writers, again, but of odd and peculiar flavour, are 
nearly sure of receiving adequate attention. But there 
are writers who belong to neither of these classes, whose 
merit consists neither in profound originality nor special 
flavour, but in a general wide eloquence and power, 
coupled with a certain commonplaceness of thought, of 
whom Cic'ero may be taken as the supreme type, and by 
those writers critics are liable to be deceived — in two ways. 
Either they admire the eloquence so much that they are 
blind to other deficiencies, or, they perceive, the latter so 
clearly that they fail to do justice to the other merits. On 
no writer have more opposite judgments been passed than 
on Cicero. By some he has been regarded as one of the 
loftiest geniuses of antiquity ; by others as a shallow, ver- 



CHAP. II.] CHARACTERISTICS. 39 

l)Osc, and ignorant pretender; and perhaps to this day 
Cicero's exact position in literature has not been settled. 
It is to be hoped that Macaiilay, who has a certain distant 
resemblance to Cicero, will not be so long in finding his 
proper place. 

That so'mething like a reaction against Macanlay's fame 
has recently set in, can hardly be doubted. It was, in- 
deed, to be expected that something of the kind would 
occur. Such reactions against the fame of great authors 
frequently appear in the generation which follows the 
period of their first splendour. New modes of thougbt 
and sentiment arise, amid which the celebrity of a recent 
past appears old-fashioned, with little of the grace which 
clothes the genuinely old. We cannot be surprised if a 
fate which overtook Pope, Voltaire, and Byron should 
now overtake Macaulay. But those writers have risen 
anew into the firmament of literature, from which they 
are not likely to fall again. The question is, whether 
Macaulay will ultimately join them as a fixed star, and if 
so, of what magnitude? It would be against analogy if 
such a wide and resonant fame as his were to suffer per- 
manent eclipse. Hasty reputations, due to ephemeral 
circumstances,, may utterly die out, but it would not be 
easy to name a really great fame among contemporaries 
which has not been largely ratified by posterity. Few 
authors have had greater contemporary fame than Ma- 
caulay. It spread through all classes and countries like 
an epidemic. Foreign courts and learned societies vied 
with the multitude in doing him honour. He was read 
with almost equal zest in cultivated European capitals and 
in the scattered settlements of remote colonies. The 
Duke of Wellington was loud in his praise. Professor 
Ranke called him an incomparable man ; and a body of 



40 MACAULAY. [chap. 

English workmen sent him a vote of thanks for having 
written a history which working-men could understand. 
An author who collects suffrages from such opposite 
quarters as these must have had the secret of touching a 
deep common chord in human nature. It is the business 
of criticism to find out what that chord was. 

Macaulay's great quality is that of being one of the 
best story-tellers that ever lived; and if we limit the 
competition to his only proper rivals — the historians — 
he may be pronounced the best story-teller. If any one 
thinks these superlatives misplaced, let him mention the 
historical writers whom he would put on a level with or 
above Macanlay — always remembering that the compari- 
son is limited to this particular point: the art of telling a 
story with such interest and vivacity that readers have 
no wish but to read on. If the area of comparison be 
enlarged so as to include questions of intellectual depth, 
moral insight, and sundry other valuable qualities, the 
competition turns against Macaulay, who at once sinks 
many degrees in the scale. But in his own line he has 
no rival. And let no one undervalue that line. He 
kindled a fervent human interest in past and real events 
which novelists kindle in fictitious events. He wrote of 
the seventeenth century with the same vivid sense of 
present reality which Balzac and Thackeray had when 
they wrote of the nineteenth century, which was before 
their eyes. And this was the peculiarity which fasci- 
nated contemporaries, and made them so lavish of praise 
and admiration. They felt, and very justly, that history 
had never been so written before. It was a quality which 
all classes, of all degrees of culture, could almost equally 
appreciate. But it produced a feeling of gratitude among 
the more experienced judges which seems likely to pass 



II.] CHARACTERISTICS. 41 

away. All the younger generation, who have grown to 
manhood since Macaulay wrote, have become intimately 
acquainted with his writings at too early an age to appre- 
ciate what an innovator he was in his day. Besides, he 
has had numerous able though inferior imitators. The 
younger fblk therefore see nothing surprising that history 
should be made as entertaining as a novel. But twenty 
or thirty years ago the case was very different. Lord 
Carlisle, when he finished the fifth (posthumous) volume, 
said he was " in despair to close that brilliant-pictured 
page." It will generally be found that old men who 
were not far from being Macaulay's equals in age are 
still enthusiastic In his praise. It is the younger genera- 
tion, who have come to maturity since his death, who 
see a good deal to censure in him, and not very much to 
admire. The late Sir James Stephen said " he could for- 
give him anything, and was violently tempted to admire 
even his faults." Mr. Leslie Stephen, his son, is one of 
the most penetrating and severe of Macaulay's critics. 

There is evidently a misunderstanding here which needs 
removing. It is another instance of the opposite sides of 
the shield producing discrepant opinions as to its colour. 
Those who admire Macaulay, and those who blame him, 
are thinking of different things. His admirers are think- 
ing of certain brilliant qualities in which he has hardly 
ever been surpassed. His censors, passing these by with 
hasty recognition, point to grave defects, and ask if such 
are compatible with real greatness. Each party should be 
led to adopt part of his opponent's view, without surren- 
dering what is true in his own. Macaulay's eminence as 
a raconteur should not only be admitted with cold assent, 
but proclaimed supreme and unrivalled in its own way, 
as it really is. On the other hand, his serious deficiencies 



42 MACAULAY. [chap. 



« 



in other ways should be acknowledged with equal frank- 
ness. 

One of his most remarkable qualities as a writer is his 
power of interesting the reader and holding his attention. 
It is a gift by itself, and not very easy to analyze. .Some 
of the greatest writers have wanted it. 

Dr. Johnson, speaking of Prior's Solomon and the par- 
tiality with which its author regarded it, says : 

" His affection was natural ; it had undoubtedly been written with 
great labour, and who is willing to think that he has been labouring 
in vain ? He had infused into it much knowledge and much thought; 
he had polished it often to elegance, and often dignified it with splen- 
dour, and sometimes heightened it to sublimity. He perceived in it 
many excellences, and did not discover that it wanted that without 
which all others are of small avail — the power of engaging attention 
and alluring curiosity. Tediousness is the most fatal of faults." 

Of the truth of this last remark there is no doubt. 
But what was the secret of the tediousness of the poem 
Solomon^ which, according to Johnson, was almost as 
great a paragon as the Hebrew monarch after whom it 
was named? A work on which great labour had been 
spent, which contained thought and knowledge, which had 
polish, elegance, splendour, and occasionally sublimity, one 
would have thought was not likely to be dull. As a mat- 
ter of fact, Solomon is dead and buried fathoms deep in 
its own dulness. In this special case Johnson gives at 
least one good reason, but he throws no light on the gen- 
eral question of dulness — in what it consists, by which we 
might also explain in what interest consists. It appears 
that Macaulay himself was puzzled with the same diffi- 
culty. " Where lies," he asks, somewhat unjustly, with 
reference to a novel of Lord Lytton, " the secret of being 



I 



ii] CHARACTERISTICS. 43 

amusing? and Low is it that art, elocjuence, and diligence 
may all be employed in making a book dull ?" 

Few authors have had in larger degree than Macaulay 
"the secret of being amusing," of "engaging attention 
and alluring curiosity," as Dr. Johnson says. He is rare- 
ly, perhaps* never, absolutely dull. On the other hand, 
he is not too lively and stimulating, and avoids, therefore, 
producing that sense of fatigue in the reader which even 
genuine wit, if there is too much of it, is apt to engender. 
He had the talent which he concedes to Walpole, of writ- 
ing what people like to read. Perhaps the secret of his 
charm lay in this : first, that he was deeply interested 
himself in the subjects that he handles. His bond fide 
wish to do them justice — to impart his knowledge — is not 
hampered by any anxious self-consciousness as to the im- 
pression he himself is making. His manner is straight- 
forward and frank, and therefore winning, and he commu- 
nicates the interest he feels. Secondly, he was an adept 
in the art of putting himself etr rapport with his reader — 
of not going too fast, or too far, or too deep for the ordi- 
nary intelligence. He takes care not only to be clear in 
language, but to follow a line of thought from which ob- 
scurity and even twilight are excluded. His attention, 
indeed, to the needs of dull readers was excessive, and has 
risked the esteem of readers of another kind. He often 
steered too near the shoals of commonplace to suit the 
taste of many persons ; still, he never fairly runs aground. 
He has one great merit which can be appreciated by all — 
his thought is always well within his reach, and is unfold- 
ed with complete mastery and ease to its uttermost fila- 
ment. He is never vague, shadowy, and incomplete. The 
reader is never perplexed by ideas imperfectly grasped, by 
thoughts which the writer cannot fully express. On the 
D 3 



44 MACAULAY. [chap. 

other hand, his want of aspiration, of all effort to rise into 
the higher regions of thought, has lost him in the opinion 
of many readers. He is one of the most entertaining, but 
also one of the least suggestive, of writers. 

His powers of brilliant illustration have never been de- 
nied, and it would not be easy to name their equal. His 
command of perfectly apposite and natural, yet not at all 
obvious, images is not more wonderful than the ease with 
which they are introduced. Few readers are likely to have 
forgotten the impression they once made on the youthful 
mind. It was something quite new and almost bewilder- 
ing, like the first night at the play. He can conjure up in 
a moment a long vista of majestic similes, which attracts 
the eye like a range of snow-capped mountains. Take, 
for instance, the opening passages of the articles on Lord 
Clive and Rankers History of the Popes. As soon as the 
curtain rises a grand panorama seems spread out before us. 
The first begins with a comparison between the English 
conquests of India and the Spanish conquest of America. 
But notice how pictorially it is done : 

" The people of India when we subdued them were ten times as 
numerous as the Americans whom the Spaniards vanquished, and 
were at the same time quite as highly civilized as the victorious 
Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa 
and Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the Cathe- 
dral of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the richest 
firms of Barcelona or Cadiz ; viceroys whose splendour far surpassed 
that of Ferdinand the Catholic ; myriads of cavalry and long trains 
of artillery which would have astonished the Great Captain." 

The passage is spoiled by mutilation ; but readers can 
turn to it if they do. not remember it. In the same way, 
the article on the Popes opens with a truly grand picture: 
"No other institution" (save the Papacy) "is left stand- 



II.] CHARACTERISTICS. 45 

ing which carries tlie inind back to the times when the 
smoke of sacrifice rose from tlie Pantheon, and when ca- 
mclopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian Amphithe- 
atre." Again : " She was great and respected before tlie 
Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the Frank had passed 
the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished in An- 
tioch, when idols were still worshipped in the Temple of 
Mecca." The sensitive youth feels his breath catch at il- 
lustrations like these. If they pall on the older mind, it 
is because they are found to be addressed almost exclu- 
sively to the eye : they are followed by nothing of impor- 
tance addressed to the reason. We shall have occasion 
to see that this sumptuous opening of the article on the 
Popes leads to a disquisition at once inaccurate in facts 
and superficial in argument. 

Macaulay's talent as an historical artist will be con- 
sidered at some length when we come to examine the 
HiHlory of EtKjland. It will \)(i sufficient in this general 
view to remark the skill with which he has overcome the 
peculiar difficulties of historical composition. The great 
difficulty in drawing the picture of a complex society 
in a past age is to. combine unity with breadth of com- 
position. In a long narrative only a very small portion 
of the picture can be seen at one time. The whole 
is never presented at one moment with concentrated 
effect, such as the painter can command, who places 
on one canvas, which can be easily surveyed, all that he 
has to tell us. The historian cannot bring all his troops 
on the ground at once and strike the mind by a wide and 
magnificent display. He is reduced to a march past in 
narrow file. The danger, therefore, is that the effect of 
the whole will be feeble or lost. In the h^nds of a weak 
man a thin stream of narrative meanders on, but a broad 



46 MACAULAY. [chap. 

view is nowhere obtained. The lowest form of historical 
writing is the chronicle, or mere annals, in which a broad 
view is not so much as aimed at. In great historical 
work the immediate portion of the narrative passing be- 
fore the reader's eye is always kept in subordinate rela- 
tion to the whole drama of which it forms a part. And 
this is th6 problem, to keep the whole suggestively before 
the reader while only a part is being shown. Only a 
strong imagination is equal to this task. The mind of the 
writer must hold the entire picture suspended in his fancy 
while he is painting each separate portion of it. And he 
paints each separate portion of it with a view to its fitness 
and relation to the whole. 

No fair critic will deny that Macaulay's execution in 
all these respects is simply masterly. The two volumes 
which comprise the reign of James II. in spite of their 
abundant detail are as truly an organic whole as a 
sonnet. Though the canvas is crowded in every part 
with events and characters, there is no confusion, no ob- 
struction to clear vision. Wherever we stand we seem 
to be opposite to the centre of the picture. However 
interested we may be in a part, we are never allowed 
to lose sight of the whole. The compelling force of the 
writer's imagination always keeps it in a latent suggestive 
way before our minds. And all this is done under a 
self-imposed burden which is without example. For, in 
obedience to his canon as to how history should be written, 
the author has weighted himself with a load of minute 
detail such as no historian ever uplifted before. He 
hardly ever mentions a site, a town, a castle, a manor- 
house, he rarely introduces even a subordinate character, 
without bringing in a picturesque anecdote, an association, 
a ?e mini scan ce out of hh boundless stores of knowledge. 



II.] CHARACTERISTICS. 47 

which sparkles like a gem on the texture of his narra- 
tive. Nothing can exceed the skill with which these little 
vignettes are thrown in, and they are incessant ; yet they 
never seem to be in the way, or to hinder the main effect. 
Take as an instance this short reference to the Earl of 
Craven. It occurs in the very crisis of the story, when 
James II. was a prisoner in his own palace, between his 
first and second attempts to fly the country : 

" James, while his fate was under discussion, remained at White- 
hall, fascinated, as it seemed, by the greatness and nearness of the 
danger, and unequal to the exertion of either struggling or flying. 
In the evening news came that the Dutch had occupied Chelsea and 
Kensington. The King, however, prepared to go to rest as usual. 
The Coldstream Guards were on duty at the palace. They were 
commanded by William, Earl of Craven, an aged man, who, more 
than fifty years before, had been distinguished in war and love, 
who had led the forlorn hope at Creutznach with such courage that 
he had been patted on the shoulder by the great Gustavus, and who 
was believed to have won from a thousand rivals the heart of the un- 
fortunate Queen of Bohemia. Craveu. was now in his eightieth year ; 
yet time had not tamed his spirit. It was past ten o'clock when he 
was informed that three battalions of the Prince's foot, mingled with 
some troops of horse, were pouring down the long avenue of St. 
James's Park, with matches lighted, and in full readiness for action. 
Count Solmes, who commanded the foreigners, said that his orders 
were to take military possession of the posts round Whitehall, and 
exhorted Craven to retire peaceably. Craven swore that he would 
rather be cut to pieces ; but when the King, who was undressing him- 
self, learned wliat was passing he forbade the stout old soldier to 
attempt a resistance which must have been ineffectual." 

How truly artistic ! and how much Craven's conduct is 
explained and heightened by that little touch recalling 
Creutznach, the forlorn hope, and the Great Gustavus ! 
What a vista up the seventeenth century to the far off 
Thirty Years' War is opened in a moment ! I recall no 



48 MACAULAY. [chap. 

writer who is Macaiilay's equal in this art of covering his 
larger surfaces with minute work which is never out of 
place. Like the delicate sculpture on the sandals of 
Athene, in the Parthenon, it detracts nothing from the 
grandeur of the statue. Or, to take a more appropriate 
figure, it resembles a richly decorated Gothic porch, in 
which every stone is curiously carved, and yet does its 
duty in bearing the weight of the mighty arch as well as 
if it were perfectly plain. 

There are only two modern men with whom he can be 
worthily compared, Michelet and Carl vie. Both are his 
superiors in what Mr. Ruskin calls penetrative imagina- 
tion. Both have an insight into the moral world and 
the mind of man, of which he is wholly incapable. Both 
have a simple directness of vision, the real poet's eye for 
nature and character, which he entirely lacks. Carlyle 
especially can emit a lightning flash, which makes Ma- 
caulay's prose, always a little pompous in his ambitious 
flights, burn dim and yellow. But on another side Ma- 
caulay has his revenge. For clear, broad width, for steadi- 
ness of view and impartiality of all-round presentations, he 
is their superior. Carlyle's dazzling effects of white light 
are frequently surrounded by the blackest gloom. Even 
that lovely " evening sun of July " — in a well-known pas- 
sage of the French Revolution — emei'ges only .for a mo- 
ment from a dark cloud, which speedily obscures it again. 
Michelet's light is less fitful than Carlyle's; it is, perhaps, 
also less brilliant. Macaulay's light, pale in comparison 
with their meteoric splendours, has the advantage of being- 
equal and steady, and free from the danger of going out. 
There is yet another quality in which he gains by com- 
parison with the strongest men — the art of historical per- 
spective. His scenes are always placed at the right dis- 



II J CHARACTERISTICS. 49 

tance for taking in their full effect. The vividness of 
Carlylc's imagination often acts like a powerful telescope, 
and brings objects too near the observer. The events in 
the French Revolution very often appear as if enacted 
under our windows. What is just in front of us we see 
with almost oppressive distinctness, but the eye cannot 
range over a wide yet perfectly visible panorama. Ma- 
caulay never falls into this error. His pictures are always 
far enough off for the whole sweep of the prospect to be 
seen with ease. He seems to lead us up to a lofty terrace 
overlooking a spacious plain which lies spread out below. 
For size, power, and brightness, if not always purity of col- 
our, he has some title to be called the Rubens of historians. 

Admitting all, or a portion, of what is thus advanced, 
the opposition to Macaulay has a very serious counter- 
statement to offer. The chief complaint — and it is suffi- 
ciently grave — 'is of a constant and pervading want of 
depth, either of thought or sentiment. Macaulay, it is 
said, did little or nothing to stir the deeper mind or the 
deeper feelings of his multitude of readers. 

As regards the first charge, want of intellectual depth, 
it is not easy to imagine even the semblance of a defence. 
Indeed, Macaulay owns his guilt with a certain amount of 
bravado. He has expressed his contempt of all higher 
speculation with too much scorn to leave any room for 
doubt or apology on that head. He never refers to phi- 
losophy except in a tone of disparagement and sneer. 
"Such speculations are in a peculiar manner the delight 
of intelligent children and half-civilized men." Among 
the speculations thus dismissed with derision are the ques- 
tions of " the necessity of human actions and the founda- 
tion of moral obligation." Thus, Macaulay disbelieved in 
the possibility of ethical science. Of a translation of Kant 



50 MACAULAY. [chap. 

whicli had been sent him he speaks with amusing airs of 
superiority, says he cannot understand a word of it any 
more than if it had been written in Sanscrit ; fully per- 
suaded that the fault lay with Kant, and not with him- 
self. But his dislike of arduous thinking did not stop 
with philosophy. He speaks of Montesquieu with great 
disdain ; pronounces him to be specious, but obscure as 
an oracle, and shallow as a Parisian coxcomb. There is 
no trace in -Macaulay's writings or life that he was ever 
arrested by an intellectual difficulty of any kind. He can 
bombard with great force of logic and rhetoric an enemy's 
position ; but his mind never seems to have suggested to 
him problems of its own. In reading him we glide along 
the smoothest surface, we are hurried from picture to pict- 
ure, but we never meet with a thoughtful pause which 
makes us consider with closed eyes what the conclusion 
may well be. Strange to say, he more nearly approaches 
discussion of principles in his speeches than in other por- 
tions of his works; but a writer of less speculative force 
hardly exists in the language. It is not easy to see from 
his diaries and correspondence that he had any intellectual 
interests of any kind, except his taste — if that can be called 
an intellectual interest — for poetry and the Greek and Lat- 
in classics. His letters are, with few exceptions, mere lively 
gossip. He rarely discusses even politics, in which he took 
so large a share, with any serious heartiness.^ He just 

^ The only even apparent exceptions to this general statement is 
a group of four or five letters of the year 1845, recounting Lord 
John Russell's abortive attempt to form a ministry ; and a truly ad- 
mirable letter to Mr. Ellis, narrating the scene in the House of •Com- 
mons on the passing of the first Reform Bill by a majority of one. 
But even these letters deal chiefly with news, and hardly attempt 
the discussion of principles. 

Perhaps the time has not yet come for a fully representative se- 



1 



II.] CHARACTERISTICS. 51 

gives the last news. He does not betray the slightest in- 
terest in science, or social or religious questions, except an 
amusing petulance at the progress of the Tractarian move- 
ment, on which he writes squibs; but otherwise he lived 
in almost complete isolation amid the active intellectual 
life of his. day. He appears to have been almost wholly 
wanting in intellectual curiosity of any kind. 

This is shown by the strange indifference with which 
he treated his own subject — history. He lived in an age 
in which some of the most important historical works 
that the world has ever seen were published. He was 
contemporary (to name only the chief) with Sismondi, 
De Barante, Guizot, the two Thierrys, Mignet, Michelet, in 
France ; with Raumer, Schlosser, Niebuhr, Otfried, Miiller, 
Gans, Neander, F. G. Bauer, Waitz, Roth, in Germany. He 
never mentions one of them — except Sismondi, with a 
sneer. The only modern historians of whom he takes 
notice are Ranke and Hallam — and this not with a view 
to considering the value of their historical work proper, 
but because they furnished him with a convenient armoury 
for his own polemical purposes. If he had had any wide, 
generous interest in the progress of historical knowledge, 
he must have shown more sympathy with men engaged in 
the same field of labour as himself. He professed to be a 
reformer of history. These men were reformers who had 
proclaimed, and put in practice, every principle of any 
value which he advocated in the Edinburgh Hevieiv, in his 
article on History, published in 1828. He lays down, not 
without a certain air as of a discoverer, the new method 
on which he conceives history should be written — that it 

lection of Macaulay's best letters. He must have written, one would 
think, to his colleagues and others with more weight and earnestness 
than appears anywhere at present. 
3* 



52 MACAULAY. [chap. 



should be, not abstract and logical, but concrete, graphic, 
and picturesque. One might have expected that two of 
the most picturesque presentations of past times which 
literature has to show — which, when Macaulay wrote his 
article, had been recently published and attracted Europe- 
an attention — would have been at least. named on such an 
occasion. De Barante's Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne 
(published in 1824-26) and Augustin Thierry's Histoire 
de la Conquete d"* Angleterre par les Normands (1825) had 
a success in the world of letters second only to Macaulay's 
own success some quarter of a century later with his His- 
tory of England. Those writers were busy with the very 
task which he summoned historians to take in hand. 
Their fame was recent and prominent, one of the events 
of the day. He was writing on a subject from which a 
reference to them, one would think, could not be excluded. 
It is excluded, as completely as if they had never existed. 
How may this be explained ? Did he not know their 
works ? or did he not appreciate them ? Neither alterna- 
tive is welcome. His friend Hallam, when an old man, 
worn down with years and domestic afflictions, set him a 
very different example. In his supplementary volume to 
the History of the Middle Ages he shows how carefully 
he had made himself acquainted with all the more impor- 
tant historical inquiries of the Continent. But then Hal- 
lam cared for the progress of historical" research : he saw- 
that history was full of problems which required solution. 
He could not be indifferent to what other men were doing. 
It is to be feared that Macaulay cared for little beside his 
own success as an historical artist. 

The most important reform in historical studies ever 
made has been the application of a critical method to the 
study of the past ; in other words, the application of as 



II.] CHARACTERISTICS. 53 

much of scientific carefulness and precision as the subject 
allows. This revolution — for it is nothing less — had 
already begun in Macaulay's youth ; and during his life- 
time it had won notable victories in almost every field of 
liistorical inquiry. He not only did nothing for historical 
criticism, he does not seem to have been aware of its exist- 
ence. He took as little notice of the labours of his coun- 
trymen, Palgrave, Dr. Guest, Kemble, as he did of the 
labours of foreigners. He investigated no obscure ques- 
tions, cleared up no difficulties, reversed the opinion of 
scholars upon no important point. The following pas- 
sage in a letter to his friend Ellis is characteristic : 
" While I was reading the earlier books (of Livy) I went 
again through Niebuhr ; and I am sorry to say tliat, hav- 
ing always been a little sceptical about his merits, I 
am now a confirmed unbeliever" — a judgment which 
throws more light on Macaulay's own merits than on 
Niebuhr's. 

The want of ethical depth 4s at least as striking. He 
looks away from moral problems even more resolutely 
than from intellectual problems. He never has anything 
to say on the deeper aspects and relations of life; and it 
would not be easy to quote a sentence from either his 
published works or private letters which shows insight 
or meditation on love, or marriage, or friendship, or the 
education of children, on religious faith or doubt. We 
find no trace in him of a " wise spirit," which has had 
practical experience of the solemn realities and truths of 
existence. His learning is confined to book-lore : he is 
not well read in the human heart, and still less in the 
human spirit. His unspirituality is complete; we never 
catch "a glimpse of the far land" through all his brill- 
iant narratives; never, in his numerous portraits, comes 



54 MACAULAY. [chap. 

a line of moral suggestiveness, showing an eye for the 
deeper springs of character, the finer shades of motive. 
His inability to criticise works of poetry and fiction ex- 
tended to their chief subject — the human heart; and it 
may be noticed that the remarkable interest he often 
awakens in a story which he tells so admirably, is nearly 
always the interest of adventure, never the interest of 
psychological analysis. Events and outward actions are 
told with incomparable clearness and vigour— but a thick 
curtain hangs before the inward theatre of the mind, 
which is never revealed on his stage. He had a favourite 
theory, on which he often insisted, that children were 
the only true poets ; and this because of the vividness of 
their impressions : " No man, whatever his sensibility may 
be, is ever affected by Hamlet, or Lear, as a little girl is 
affected by the story of poor little Red Riding-hood "— 
as if the force of the impression were everything, and its 
character nothing. By this rule, wax -work should be 
finer art than the best sculpture in stone. The impres- 
siveness of remote suggestive association by which high 
art touches the deepest chords of feeling Macaulay, appar- 
ently, did not recognize. He had no ear for the finer 
harmonies of the inner life. 

The truth is that he almost wholly lacked the stronger 
passions. A sweet, affectionate tenderness for friends 
and relations was the deepest emotion he knew. This, 
coupled with his unselfishness, made him a most winning 
character to those near him, as it certainly filled his life 
with placid content and happiness. But there is no 
evidence of strong feeling in his story. I cannot readily 
believe the report that he was ever at one time a good 
hater. He had his tempers, of course, like other men ; 
but what sign is there of any fervent heat, or lasting 



II.] CHARACTERISTICS. 55 

mood of passion ? Even in politics — the side on which 
he was most susceptible of strong feeling — he soon be- 
came calm, reasonable, gentle — like the good, upright, 
amiable man he was. Consider his prudence. He never 
took a hasty or unwise step in his life. His judgment 
was never misled in matters of conduct for a single mo- 
ment. He walked in the honourable path he had chosen 
with a certainty as unerring as if Minerva had been 
present at his side. He never seems to have had occa- 
sion either to yield to, or to resist, a strong temptation. 
He was never in love. Ambition never got possession 
of his mind. We cannot imagine him doing anything 
wrong, or even indecorous : an elopement, a duel, an es- 
clandre of any kind, cannot be associated even in imag- 
ination with his name. He was as blameless as Telem- 

achus— 

" Centred in the sphere 
Of common duties, decent not to- fail 
In offices of tenderness, and pay 
Meet adoration to the household gods " — 

of spotless respectability. He is not to be blamed, but 
very much envied, for such a constitution of mind. But 
this is not the stuff of which great writers who stir men's 
hearts are made. He makes us esteem him so much that 
we can do little more; he cannot provoke our love, pity, 
or passionate sympathy. There is no romance, pathos, 
or ideality in his life or his writings. We never leave 
him conscious that we have been raised into a higher 
tone of feeling, chastened and subdued into humility, 
courage, and sacrifice. He never makes us feel " what 
shadows we are and what shadows we pursue." How 
should he ? His own view of life was essentially flat and 
prosaic. Not an aspiration for the future ; no noble 



56 MACAULAY. [chap. 

unrest and discontent with the present; no sympathetic 
tenderness for the past. He resembled Rubens in more 
ways than one. 

"No phenomenon in the human mind," says Mr. Ruskin, "is moi-c 
extraordinary than the junction of this cold, worldly temper with 
great rectitude of principle and tranquil kindness of heart. Rubens 
was an honourable and entirely well-intentioned man, earnestly indus- 
trious, simple and temperate in habits of life, high-bred, learned, and 
discreet ; his affection for his mother was great ; his generosity to 
contemporary artists unfailing. He is a healthy, worthy, kind-heart- 
ed, courtly-phrased — animal, without any clearly perceptible traces 
of a soul, except when he paints his children."^ 

Macaulay had no children of his own to paint; but no 
man was ever fonder of children. 

" He was, beyond all comparison, the best of playfellows ; unri- 
valled in the invention of games, and never Avearied of repeating 
them. He had an inexhaustible repertory of small dramas for the 
benefit of his nieces, in which he sustained an endless number of 
parts. . . . There was one never-failing game, of building up a den 
with newspapers behind the sofa, and of enacting robbers and tigers 
— the children shrieking with terror, but always fascinated, and 
begging him to begin again."^ 

He had complete sympathy \yith children, and knew 
the way to their hearts better than to those of their 
seniors. Once he bought a superb sheet of paper for a 
guinea, on which to write a valentine to his little niece 
Alice. He notes in. his diary on the 14th of February :^ 

" At three . . . came the children, Alice was in perfect raptures 
over her valentine. She begged quite pathetically to be told the 
truth about it. When we were alone together she said, ' I am going 
to be very serious.' Down she fell before me on her knees, and 
lifted up her hands : 'Dear uncle, do tell the truth to your little girl. 
Did you send the valentine ?' I did not choose to tell a real lie to a 
child, even about such a trifle, and so I owned it." 

' Modern Painters^ vol. v. part 9. ^ Trevelyan^ vol. ii. cap. ii. 



11.] CHARACTERISTICS. 5*7 

A clianniiig littlo sccik', sliovving Macaulay's two best 
sides, tenderness and rectitude. But ao;ain : to distress, 
or its artful counterfeit, he was always pitiful and gener- 
ous. In his journal he writes: '"''December 27. — Disagree- 
able weather, and disagreeable news. is in difficulty 

again. I, sent 50/., and shall send the same to , who 

does not ask it. But 1 cannot help being vexed. All the 
fruits of my book have for this year been swallowed up. 
It will be all that 1 can do to make both ends meet with- 
out breaking in upon capital." Leigh Hunt enclosed in a 
begging letter a criticism on the Roman Lays, lamenting 
that they wanted the true poetical aroma which breathes 
from Spenser's Faery Queen. Macaulay, who liad none of 
an author's vanity, was "much pleased" with this sin- 
cerity. 

Is there not reason to doubt whether a natural predis- 
position to the cardinal virtues is the best outfit for the 
prophet, the artist, or even the preacher? Saints from of 
old have been more readily made out of publicans and sin- 
ners than out of Pharisees who pay tithes of all they pos- 
sess. The artist, the writer, and even the philosopher 
equally need passion to do great work; and genuine pas- 
sion is ever apt to be unruly, though by stronger men 
eventually sAbdued. '' Coldness and want of passion in 
a picture are not signs of its accuracy, but of the paucity 
of its statements."^ " Pour faire de bons vers, il faut avoir 
le diable au corps," said Voltaire. Macaulay had far too 
little of the "diable au corps" to make him a writer of 
impressive individuality and real power. The extent of 
his fame is out of all proportion to its depth. Except a 
certain influence on the style of journalism, which threatens 
to be transient, he has left little mark on his age. Out of 

^ Modem Fainter s, vol. i. 



58 MACAULAY. [chap. 

his millions of readers there has scarcely come one genuine 
disciple. 

By a change of taste as remarkable as any in literature 
his style, which was universally admired, is now very free- 
ly decried — perhaps more than justice requires. It can- 
not be denied that it was a new style : all contemporaries, 
headed by Jeffrey, agreed upon that point. Real novelty 
of style is generally a safe test of originality of mind and 
character. With Macaulay the test does not extend so far. 
Still, his style is perhaps the most original thing about him. 
Its peculiarity is the skill with which he has imparted to 
written language a large portion of the swing and rush of 
spoken oratory. He can be read with a good deal of the 
pleasurable excitement which numbers of people feel in 
listening to facile and voluble discourse. As a rule, copi- 
ous and fluent oratory makes very bad reading ; but Ma- 
caulay had the secret of transposing his thoughts from the 
language of spoken discourse, which seems their proper 
vehicle, to the language of written prose, without loss of 
effect. To no one talent, perhaps, does he owe so much 
of his reputation. The more refined and delicate literary 
styles are unpopular in proportion to their excellence ; 
their harmonies and intervals, fascinating to the cultivated 
ear, are not only lost on but somewhat offensive to the 
multitude. For one hearer thrilled by a sonata or a fugue 
a thousand are delighted by what are sometimes called the 
spirit-stirring strains of Rule, Britaymia. At an early date 
Macaulay gauged the popular taste. In 1830 he wrote 
to Macvey Napier complaining that some of the " most 
pointed and ornamental sentences" in an article had been 
omitted. "Probably," he continues, "in estimating the 
real value of any tinsel which I may put upon my articles, 
you and I should not materially differ. But it is not by 



h] characteristics. 69 

his own tustc, but by the tasto of the fish, that the angler 
IS determined in his choice of bait." It would be unfair 
to dwell on such a remai'k in a private letter, if it stood 
alone. But all his practice during thirty years was in 
unison with the principle here laid down. Eschewing high 
thought OH the one hand, and deep feeling on the other, 
he marched down a middle road of resonant commonplace, 
quite certain that where 

"Bang, whang, whang, goes the drum, 
And tootle-tee-tootle the fife," 

the densest crowd, marching in time, will follow the music. 
Still, it is the air -rather than the instrument which makes 
some persons inclined to stop their ears. It is quite true 
that the measures of Macaulay's prose "are emphatically 
the measures of spoken deliverance ;" but the spoken de- 
liverance is of the Bar, the hustings, or the House of Com- 
mons. The want of benignity, the hard and scolding 
precision, with which he has -been justly reproached, are 
due rather to the matter and substance than to the form 
of his speech. His tone of sentiment is such as would 
lose nothing by being uttered in a loud voice at a public 
meeting, and he is, indeed, far from reaching the highest 
notes of solemn elevation and simple pathos with which 
such an audience inspires some orators. But neither in 
public nor in private had Macaulay any gift for expressing 
either tender or lofty emotion. His letters are singularly 
wanting in effusion and expansiveness, even when address- 
ed to friends and relatives for whom we know he had 
warm affection. But his love took the form of solid 
matter-of-fact kindness, not of a sympathy in delicate 
unison with another spirit with whom an interchange of 

sentiment is a need of existence. He seenis to have been 
E 



60 MACAULAY. [chap. 

one of those thoroughly good-hearted, good-natured persons 
who are wanting in tact, delicacy, and sensitiveness/ A 
certain coarseness of fibre is unmistakable. Nothing else 
will account for the "mean and ignoble association" of 
ideas, which he often seems rather to seek than avoid. 
He prefers comparisons which, by their ungraduated, 
unsoftened abruptness, produce a shock on nerves less 
robust than his own. "The victuallers soon found out 
with whom they had to deal, and sent down to the fleet 
casks of meat which dogs would not touch, and barrels of 
beer which smelt worse than bilge-water." Nothing is 
gained by such crudity of language ; and truth is sacri- 
ficed, if that is a consideration. Dogs have no objection 
to tainted meat, and nothing can smell worse than bilge- 
Abater. " For our part, if we are forced to make our choice 
between the first shoemaker and the author of the three 

' He was benevolent, but unsympathetic; he cared not for the 
beauty of nature, he detested dogs, and, except a narrow group of 
relations and friends, he cared not for men. One of the least pleas- 
ant passages in his biography is a scene he had with an Italian cus- 
tom-house oflScer, who asked to be allowed a seat in his carriage 
from Velletri to Mola. Macaulay refused. Of this there- is nothing 
to be said ; the man may easily have been an undesirable companion. 
But the comment on the incident is wanting in the right tone : " I 
gave him three crowns not to plague by searching my baggage. . . . 
He pocketed the three crowns, but looked very dark and sullen at 
my refusal to accept his company. Precious fellow ! to think th»fc 
a public functionary to whom a little silver is a bribe, is fit company 
for an English gentleman." Narrow and unintelligent. In mere 
knowledge Macaulay could certainly have derived much more from 
the man than the latter from Macaulay. But he had little curiosity 
or interest in the minds of others. It will be remembered in what 
isolation he spent his time on the voyage to India: "Except at 
meals, I hardly exchanged a word with any human being." One 
cannot imagine Socrates or Johnson acting thus. 



II.] CHARACTERISTICS, i 61 

books on Anocr, we pronounce for the shoemaker;" and 
one may add, you are certain to gain the gallery's applause 
by so doing. " To the seared consciences of Shaftesbury 
and Buckingham the death of an innocent man gave no 
more uneasiness than the death of a partridge." "A hus- 
band would be justly derided who should bear from a 
wife of exalted rank and spotless virtue half the insolence 
which the King of England bore from concubines who, 
while they owed everything to his bounty, caressed his 
courtiers almost before his face." Sentences like these, in 
which the needless emphasis of the words shows up the 
more plainly the deficient dignity and weight of thought, 
are of frequent occurrence, and deprive Macaulay's prose of 
the high quality of distinction. His comparison of Mon- 
tesquieu with the learned pig and musical infant is in the 
same style. But perhaps the most striking instance of his 
tendency to a low-pitched strain of allusion is to be found 
in his journal, on the occasion of liis visit to Dumbarton 
Castle in the last year of his Hfe : "I remember my first 
visit to Dumbarton, and the old minister who insisted on 
our eating a bit of cake with him, and said a grace over it 
which might have been prologue to a dinner at the Fish- 
mongers' Company or the Grocers' Company." The no- 
tion that the size and sumptuousness of a feast are to de- 
termine the length and fervour of the thanksgiving is one 
which one hardly expects to find outside of the Common 
Council, if even it is to be met with there. Macaulay's utter 
inability to comprehend piety of mind is one of the most 
singular traits in his character, considering his antecedents. 
Macaulay's style, apart from its content, presents one 
or two interesting problems which one would like to 
solve. An able critic has noticed the singular fact that, 
though he seems to take pains to be pleonastic and re- 



62 MACAULAY. [chap. 

dundant, he is nevertheless invariably lively/ His varia- 
tions of one tune do not weary, as one might expect. In 
the same way, the oratorical swing and rapidity which 
he undoubtedly possesses do not appear easy to reconcile 
with his short sentences and the mechanically regular 
stroke of his periods. His paragraphs are often built up 
by a succession of tiers, one over the other ; they do not 
seem to grow from a central root of thought or senti- 
ment. Sentences not exceeding a line in average length, 
reduced to their lowest terms of subject, predicate, and 
copula, are held together only by the art of the typog- 
rapher. "The people of Gloucester rose, and delivered 
Lovelace from confinement. An irregular army soon 
gathered around him. Some of his horsemen had only 
halters for bridles. Many of his infantry had only clubs 
for weapons." The monotony of rhythm is sometimes re- 
enforced by the monotony of phrase, sentence after sentence 
beginning with the same words ; as, for instance, this con- 
clusion of the Essay on Lord Holland: 

" The time is coming when, perhaps, a few old men, the last sur- 
vivors of our generation, will in vain seek, amidst new streets, and 
squares, and railway- stations, for the sight of that dwelling which 
was in their youth the favourite resort of wdts and beauties — of 
painters and poets — of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. They 
will then remember, with strange tenderness, many objects once fa- 
miliar to them — the avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paint- 
ings ; the carving, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatic mottoes. 
With peculiar fondness they will recall that venerable chamber, in 
Avhich all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly 
blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish 
a drawing-room, Tliey will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves load- 
ed with the varied learning of many lands and many ages; those 
portraits in which were preserved the features of the best and wisest 

^ Hours in a Library, by L. Stephen, 3rd series. 



II.] CHARACTERISTICS. 63 

Englishmen of two generations. They will recollect how many mea 
who have guided the politics of Europe — who have moved great as- 
semblies by reason and eloquence — who have put life into bronze 
and canvas, or who have left to posterity things so written as it shall 
not willingly let them die — were there mixed with all that was love- 
liest and gayest in the society of the most splendid of capitals. Tliey 
null remernher the singular character which belonged to that circle in 
which everv*talent and accomplishment, every art and science, had its 
place. Theii unll remember how the last debate was discussed in one 
corner, and tlie last comedy of Scribe in another ; while Wilkie gazed 
with modest admiration on Reynolds's Baretti ; while Mackintosh 
turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation ; while Talleyrand 
related his conversations with Barras at the Luxemburg, or his rides 
with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz. Titey will rew-emher^ above 
all, the grace — and the kindness, far more admirable than grace — 
with which the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion wati 
dispensed. They will remember the venerable and benignant counte- 
nance and the cordial voice of him who bade them welcome. They 
will remember that temper which years of pain, of sickness, of lame- 
ness, of confinement, seemed only lo make sweeter and sweeter ; and 
that frank politeness, which at once relieved all the embarrassment 
of the youngest and most timid writer or artist who found himself 
for the first time among ambassadors and earls. TJiey will remem- 
ber that constant flow of conversation, so natural, so animated, so 
various, so rich with observation and anecdote ; that wit which never 
gave a wound ; that exquisite mimicry which ennobled, instead of 
degrading, that goodness of heart which appeared in every look and 
accent, and gave additional value to every talent and acquirement. 
They will remember, too, that he whose name they hold in reverence 
was not less distinguished by the inflexible uprightness of his polit- 
ical conduct than by his loving disposition and winning manners. 
They will remember that in the last lines which he traced he ex- 
pressed his joy that he had done nothing unworthy of the friend of 
Fox and Grey ; and they will have reason to feel similar joy, if, in 
looking back on many troubled years, they cannot accuse themselves 
of having done anything unworthy of men who were distinguished 
by the friendship of Lord Holland." 

If the Ijolit of nature and an ordinary ear were not 



64 MACAULAY. [chap. 



sufficient to warn a writer against such repetition, Ma- 
caulay, who had read his Aristotle and Quinctilian, might 
have been expected to tnow better. " The qualities and 
artifices of style which tell in declamation, for which they 
were intended, when divested of this aid do not fulfil 
their proper function ; as, for instance, asyndeta and the 
reiteration of the same word ; and though the orators 
employ them in their debates, as adapted to delivery, in 
the written style they appear silly, and are justly rep- 
robated.''''^ Indeed, Macaulay never quite overcame a ten- 
dency to abuse this common and useful rhetorical figure in 
an order of composition for which it is unfit. It is to 
be found in the first page of his History, and is so com- 
mon in his Essays, that their style is very often identical 
with that of his speeches. 

The art by which Macaulay has caused these various 
blemishes not only to be condoned, but to be entirely 
unperceived, by the majority of readers is derived from 
the imaginative power and splendour of his larger tab- 
leaux. The sentences may be aggregates of atoms, but 
the whole is confluent, and marked by masterly unity. 
Style may be considered from more than one aspect. 
We may consider it from the point of view of the gram- 
marian or professor of rhetoric, with reference mainly to 
the choice of words, the propriety of phrase, the rhythm 
of sentence. Or we may consider it from the higher 
stand-point — the general effect and impressiveness of the 
whole composition ; the pervading power, lucidity, and 
coherence, which make a book attractive to read and easy 
to master. In the former . class of qualities Macaulay 
leaves much to be desired. In the latter he has not many 
superiors. Artless, and almost clumsy as he is in build- 
* Cope's Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric, p. 326. 



1 



II.] CHARACTERISTICS. 65 

ing a sentence, into whicli he is without the skill to 
weave, as some moderns do, 

" Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished sigh on sigh," 

in building a chapter, an article, or a book he has a grand 
and easy power which ought " to bring the sweat into the 
brow" of 'some who hold him cheap. His short sen- 
tences, when looked at by themselves so isolated and thin, 
are the lines of a fine engraving all converging to pro- 
duce one well-considered artistic effect — an effect in which 
neither deep thought nor high feeling has a share, but 
still one so brilliant and striking that the criticism which 
overlooks it may justly be accused of blindness. 



CHAPTER III. 



We sometimes hear Macanlay's Essays preferred to iiis 
History, not only as more popular, but as showing more 
genius and power. Although this opinion could hardly 
be held by any serious critic, it contains enough truth to 
make its existence intelligible. The Essays have quali- 
ties of variety, freedom, and, above all, brevity, which the 
History is necessarily without, but which are very taking 
qualities with the readers whom Macaulay chiefly ad- 
dresses. A long-sustained work devoted to the history 
of one country in one period, however lively it may be 
made, demands a heavier tax on the attention than many 
are able to pay. The large and ever-growing class who 
read, not for knowledge but for amusement, as- an in- 
nocent mode of killing time, soon become weary of one 
subject carried on through several volumes. Their weak 
mental appetite needs stimulating by a frequent change 
of diet. Length is the one thing they fear and most dis- 
like. To take up the same work day after day oppresses 
them with the sense of a task, and they promptly con- 
ceive an ill-will to the author for not keeping pace with 
their changes of mood. Even the highest works of 
poetical genius — the Faery Queen and Paradise Lost— 
are said to be comparatively neglected, simply on account 



CHAP. III.] THE " ESSAYS." 67 

of their volume, which alarms the indolence of readers. 
And it may well be doubted whether even Shakspeare 
does not owe a great deal of his popularity with the read- 
ing public to the fact tliat plays are necessarily short, and 
can be read through in a short time. 

To readers of this temper — and they probably are a vast 
majority — ^*essays offer the very thing they are in search of. 
No strain on the attention, frequent change of subject, a 
happy medium between undue length and undue brevity, 
are qualities exactly suited to their taste. This alone 
might well be the sole or chief reason why Macaulay's 
Ussaf/s should be by some preferred to his History. But 
this is probably not the only reason. The Essays have 
some merits which" the History lacks. They were all writ- 
ten in the vigour of life, before his mind was saddened, 
if not enfeebled, by serious ill-health. They were short 
enough to be struck off at a heat, and many, we know, 
were written with extreme rapidity. They consequently 
have the attractive quality of exuberant vigour, high spir- 
its, and conscious strength which delights in exercise and 
rapid motion for their own sake. A sense of weariness in 
the writer, however much it may be concealed by art, is 
almost sure to be felt by the reader sympathetically. Of 
this drawback few authors ever knew less than Macaulay 
up to the time of his illness. His prompt and full com- 
mand of his faculties made, as he said, composition noth- 
ing but a pleasure to him. No man ever worshipped a 
more bountiful muse. He had no labour pains, no dark 
wrestlings with thoughts which he could not throw, con- 
quered and subdued, with vigorous strength down on paper. 
His Essays, therefore, in many ways much less finished and 
careful, have often more verve than the History. Like the 
first flight of the falcon, they show a store of unsubdued 
4 



68 MACAULAY. [chap, 

energy, which, so far from fearing fatigue, rather seeks it, 
and does not readily find it. 

The originality of form and treatment which Macaulay 
gave to the historical essay has not, perhaps, received due 
recognition. Without having invented it, he so greatly 
expanded and improved it that he deserves nearly as. much 
credit as if he had. He did for the historical essay what 
Haydn did for the sonata, and Watt for the steam-engine : 
he found it rudimentary and unimportant, and left it com- 
plete and a thing of power. Before his time there was 
the ponderous history — generally in quarto — and there 
was the antiquarian dissertation. There was also the his- 
torical review, containing alternate pages of extract and 
comment — generally rathei* dull and gritty. But the his- 
torical essay as he conceived it, and with the prompt inspi- 
ration of a real discoverer immediately put into practical 
shape, was as good as unknown before him. To take a 
bright period or personage of history, to frame it in a firm 
outline, to conceive it at once in article-size, and then to 
fill in this limited canvas with sparkling anecdote, telling 
bits of colour, and facts all fused together by a real genius 
for narrative, was the sort of genre-painting which Macau- 
lay applied to history. We have only to turn to the back 
numbers of the Edinburgh Review to perceive how his ar- 
ticles gleam in those old pages of "gray paper and blunt 
type." And to this day his Essays remain the best of 
their class, not only in England but in Europe. Slight, or 
even trivial, in the field of historical erudition and critical 
inquiry, they are masterpieces, if regarded in the light of 
great popular cartoons on subjects taken from modern 
history. They are painted, indeed, with such freedom, 
vividness, and power, that they may be said to enjoy a sort 
of tacit monopoly of the periods and characters to which 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 69 

they refer, in the estimation of the general public. How 
many persons, outside the class of professed students, know 
much of Lord Chatham, Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, Wal- 
pole, Pulteney, Carteret, and many more, beyond what they 
learn from the pages of Macaulay ? His friend Lord Stan- 
hope is a much more safe, steady, and trustworthy guide 
through th*e eighteenth century. But for one reader who 
will sit down to the accurate, conscientious, ill-written His- 
tory of England by Lord Stanhope, a hundred will read, 
and read again, the brilliant Essays. Any portion of Eng- 
lish history which Macaulay has travelled over — the remark 
applies much less to his treatment of foreign subjects — is 
found to be moulded into a form which the average Eng- 
lishman at once enjoys and understands. He did, it has 
been truly said, in a small way, and in solid prose, the 
same thing for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
that Shakspeare did in a poetical way for the fifteenth 
century. The first Duke of Marlborough had the candour 
to acknowledge that all he knew of the history of England 
he derived from Shakspeare's historical plays. We may 
surmise that many who would not readily confess it are 
equally indebted to Macaulay. He succeeded in achieving 
the object which he always professed to aim at — making 
history attractive and interesting — to a degree never at- 
tained before. This is either a merit or a fault, according 
to the point of view from which we regard it ; but from 
every point of view it was no common feat. 

It will be convenient to classify the Essays in the fol- 
lowing groups, with the object of giving as much unity as 
possible to a subject necessarily wanting it : 

(1.) English history. (3.) Controversial. 

(2.) Foreign history. (4.) Critical and miscellaneous. 



VO MACAULAY. [chap. 

English History Grotop.^ — If the articles composing 
this group are arranged with reference to the chronol- 
ogy of the periods they treat of, they form a fairly com- 
plete survey of English history from the time of Eliza- 
beth to the later years of the reign of George III. This 
was the portion of our history to which Macaulay had de- 
voted most time and attention. The period previous to 
the Reformation he had studied with much less care. His 
acquaintance with the Middle Age generally may without 
injustice be pronounced slight; and though well informed 
as to the history of the Continent, his knowledge of it, as 
we shall have occasion to see, was not so accurate or deep. 
But his knowledge of English history in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries was minute, extensive, and pro- 
found. These twelve essays may be regarded as prelimi- 
nary studies, by which he preluded and prepared himself 
for his great work. Nothing can be more obvious than 
that the historical student was guided in his choice of this 
field by the sympathies and opinions of the active poli- 
tician. He was a Whig, with ardent and disinterested 
conviction, when to be a Whig was to be a friend of 
liberty and progress in the most rational and practical 
form. During the long predominance of Tory rule and 
sentiment the heroic age of England had been defaced, 
and perverted into a hideous and malignant caricature. 
A vigorous vindication of English liberty in the past 
allied itself naturally, in the pages of the Edinburgh 
Review, with the active polemics there carried on in fa- 
vour of the same liberty in the present. It was not as an 
antiquarian that Macaulay insisted upon a new hearing of 
the great cause in which Charles I., Strafford, and Laud 

^ Burleigh, Hallam, Hampden, Milton, Temple, Mackintosh, Wal- 
pole, Pitt-Chatham, Olive, Warren Hastings. 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 71 

appeared on the one side, against Hampden, Pym, and 
Cromwell on the other, but as the active member of 
Parliament, who supported the first Reform Bill with 
five powerful speeches in one year. He attacked Tory- 
ism indirectly, by writing on the great Liberal leaders of 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as the Reform- 
ers attacked Catholicism by writing on the primitive dis- 
cipline and doctrine of the Early Church. When writing 
of the Long Parliament or the Revolution an implied ref- 
erence is always visible to the Whigs and Tories of his 
own day. Sometimes the reference to contemporary poli- 
tics is open and direct, as when, in the midst of his discus- 
sion of the conduct of the Parliamentary leaders headed 
by Hampden, he makes a sudden and telling allusion to the 
contemporary condition of Spain under Ferdinand VH. 
{Memorials of Hampden). 

The party character of Macaulay's Essays on English 
history is neither to be denied nor deplored. That he 
rendered a great political service to the cause of Liberal- 
ism cannot be doubted, and every deduction that may be 
made from the merit of the historian must be set down 
to the account of the publicist. Scientific history was 
never his object, but the propagation of sound constitu- 
tional doctrine was very much so. It has been said with 
truth that, in all he ever wrote, a defence open or implied 
of Whig principles may be perceived. That this connex- 
ion of his work with the ephemeral politics of the day 
will injure its permanent value is very obvious; but not, 
perhaps, to the extent that is sometimes supposed. 

It is one of the affectations of the hour to use the 
term Whig as a convenient vehicle of polite vituperation. 
A man who can now with any accuracy be called a genuine 
old Whig is by some persons considered to be beyond the 



72 MACAULAY. [chap. 

pale of toleration. No further anathema is needed; the 
deadliest slur has been cast on his intellect and character 
in one word. A hatred of pure reason, and a comforta- 
ble middle-class creed on social matters, are the two most 
offensive characteristics generally ascribed to the Whig. 
They would be offensive enough if Whiggism was, or 
pretended to be, a philosophical theory of politics. But 
in Macaulay's day Whiggism was not a philosophy, but 
a scheme of practical expediency — a working policy which 
had a chance of being realized. What, after all, is the 
essence of Whiggism as distinct from its accidents? Is 
it not this : illogical but practical compromise between 
two extremes which are logical but not at all practical? 
It is no isolated phenomenon confined to certain periods 
of English history, but one of the most general to be 
found, not only in politics but in religion, and even philoso- 
phy. Wherever men are engaged in steering between the 
opposite shoals of extreme parties with a view to practical 
result, there Whiggism exists in reality if not in name. 
Bossuet was a Whig in the Catholic Church, and Pascal 
was a Whig in the Gallican Church. Reid, Brown, and 
Coleridge, even Kant, were Whigs in philosophy, - Whig- 
gism is always the scorn of thorough-going men and rigor- 
ous logicians ; is ever stigmatized as a bending of the knee 
to Baal. But thorough-going men, actuated by thorough- 
going logic, do not often, or for long, .remain directors of 
public affairs. No man was ever less of a philosopher, or 
more of a politician, than Macaulay. He had an eye to 
business, not to abstract truth. The present age, which 
sees only the writer, and has nearly forgotten the poli- 
tician, is easily tempted to judge him by a standard to 
which he did not and could not conform. His own 
perene unconsciousness of his want of speculative power 



in.] THE "ESSAYS." 73 

is at once amusing and irritating. But the point to be 
remembered is, that when we have written Whig after 
liis name, and declared they are convertible terms, all is 
not said and done, and that, for purposes of criticism, 
the process is too simple and summary to be of much 
vakie. We have to consider the object at which he 
aimed, not to complain of his failure to hit a mark which 
he never thought of. A man engaged in paving the best 
via media that he can find between ultra opinions on op- 
posite sides is always exposed to taunt. Macaulay was re- 
viled by Chartists and Churchmen, and he himself disliked 
high Tories and philosophical Radicals in equal measure. 
When the object is to gain votes for practical measures 
the beauties of pure reason are apt to be overlooked. 
The great maxim of prudence on these occasions is, " not 
to go too far" in any direction. Logic and consistency 
are readily sacrificed for the sake of union in action. 
Closet philosophers naturally resent this as very mean 
and commonplace. But that is because they are closet 
philosophers. 

The party bias of the Essays^ it is said, deprives them 
of all value as history. And this is partly true. But let 
us be just even to, party historians. AVhen it is claimed 
that the historian must above all things be impartial, what 
is meant by the word ? Is it demanded that the writer on 
a past age is to take no side — to have no preference, either 
for persons whom he considers virtuous, or for principles 
which he considers just; and, again, is he to have no rep- 
robation for the contraries to these, which he considers 
unjust and pernicious? If this is meant by impartiality, 
the answer is, that on these lines history cannot be, and 
never has been, written. Such is the solidarity of human 
iiature that it refuses to regard the just and the unjust 



74 MACAULAY. [chap. 

with equal favour in tlie past any more than in the pres- 
ent. Of course the question is always reserved as to which 
party in the suit these epithets respectively apply. Erro- 
neous judgments have been passed in the court of history, 
as they are passed in courts of law. But that is no argu- 
ment for maintaining that both sides are entitled to the 
same favour and good-will. Both sides are entitled to 
justice, and justice may require the utmost severity of 
condemnation of one of the parties. No judge at the 
end of a criminal trial was ever able to conceal the side 
to which he inclined in his summing up. His business is 
not to abstain from having an opinion — which a man of 
intelligence could hardly do — but to point to the decisive 
evidence on either side, and, holding up the scales, to let 
the lighter kick the beam in the eyes of all men. If this 
is partiality, it is such as no honest man would like to be 
without. So the historian : his duty is to be impartial in 
weighing evidence ; but that being done, to declare with 
unmistakable clearness which side has been found want- 
ing. As he is human, he is exposed to error, but for that 
there is no remedy. Miscarriages of justice must and will 
occur. They must be redressed when discovered. And, 
fortunately, errors of this kind are of less grave practical 
consequence in the courts of history than in the courts of 
law. Yet we submit to the latter, being unable to help 
ourselves. It is vain to hope that this subjective bias can 
ever be removed from the mind of a human judge. And 
it is not desirable to remove it. What is worthy of blame 
is the suppression or garbling of evidence — not holding 
really true scales. The notion that such bias is necessari- 
ly connected with the party-spirit of modern times, and 
shown only in reference to modern periods of history, is 
quite without foundation. The history of Greece and 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 75 

Rome is subject to it as much as the history of Modern 
Europe. Mitford was biassed in favour of the oligarchies 
of Greece. Grote was equally biassed in favour of the 
democracies. So far each was within his right. But if 
it appears that either was unfair in collecting and sifting 
evidence, and showed anxiety to win a verdict by his mis- 
presentation of it, then he is to be condemned as an un- 
just judge — or, rather, he is an advocate who has usurped 
a judge's functions and merits degradation. Mitford has 
been deposed, and justly so, in the opinion of competent 
men. Grote, on the whole, has been maintained by the 
same opinion. 

Further, if we grant that historians are exposed to pe- 
culiar temptations' to slide from the position of judge to 
that of advocate — if they are honest advocates, maintain- 
ing the cause they believe to be just, by honourable means, 
they need not fear much censure from equitable men. The 
final judge, after all, is public opinion — not of a day, or a 
year, or even of a century, but of ages. Perhaps it can 
never be absolutely obtained. But in the mean while noth- 
ing is more serviceable to the cause of truth than that 
every important party to an historical suit should be repre- 
sented by the ablest advocate that can be found, so long 
as he is honest— that is, not only refrains from telling lies, 
but from suppressing truth. Every open-minded inquirer 
must be glad to hear all that can be said in favour of a 
given side ; nay, to hear most of all what can be said in 
favour of the side to which he himself does not belong. 
It is vastly more comforting to hear Dr. Lingard condemn 
James II. of injustice, infatuation, arbitrary and impotent 
policy, than to hear the most eloquent indictments of the 
same monarch from those who hold Whig opinions. When 
Hume condemns Charles I. for the arrest of the five Mem- 
F 4* 



76 MACAULAY. [chap. 

bers, we feel quite sure that on tliat point at least nothing 
can be said, or such an able, not to say unscrupulous, ad- 
vocate would not have omitted it. In time the heats of 
party zeal are gradually cooled ; questions of disputed fact 
are reduced to narrow issues. The motives and characters 
of the most prominent actors are at last weighed by impar- 
tial men, who have no interest stronger in the matter than 
the discovery of truth. Then we have reached the critical 
stage of history. 

Macaulay was far from having reached this higher stage. 
But as a writer of party history he stands high. If his 
mind was uncritical, his temper was generally fair. No one 
would expect the party against whom he appeared — the 
sympathizers with high prerogative as against the sympa- 
thizers with liberty — to admit this. But his Whig version 
of our history has been, on the whole, accepted by a wide 
public, with whom political partisanship is not a strong pas- 
sion. His frank avowal of his sympathies can be a defect 
only in the eyes of the unintelligent, or the bigoted who will 
brook no contradiction. His bias is open and above-board; 
he lays his proofs before you, which you may accept or 
refuse, but in a candid way — very different from the sly, 
subtle disingenuousness of Hume. At the same time it 
must be admitted that the common fate of controversialists 
is already beginning to overtake Macaulay. His point of 
view is already somewhat out of date. We are always re- 
pelled, or disdainfully amused, by the heats of a remote 
controversy which does not touch our passions or interests. 
It seems absurd to be so angry with people who lived so 
long ago, and who clearly never did us, any harm. The 
suave mari magna feeling is a little ungenerous, but 
very natural and common. A critic complains that 
Macaulay " mauls poor James 11." as he did the Tories 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 77 

of 1832. It no doubt requires an historical imagination 
of some liveliness to make us perceive that pity is wasted 
on a sovereign whose wickedness was only defeated by 
his folly. We are in no danger of being tried and brow- 
beaten by Jeffreys or hanged by Colonel Kirke. Such are 
the gratitude and the " little short memories " of mankind. 
Nevertheless, it is a true instinct which warns us against 
transferring the passions of the present to the remote past. 
The passions should be quiet, only the critical reason 
should be active, surveying the concluded story with calm 
width, and telling us what it all amounted to. 

It will not be expected that all Macaulay's Essays 
should be passed in review in a short work of this kind. 
We can only find space for a few words on the most 
memorable, omitting the less famous as we pass over the 
relatively unimportant pictures in a gallery. 

The Essays, as might well be supposed, are unequal in 
merit. One of the weakest is that which appears first on 
the list given a few pages back, Burleigh and his Times. 
It is at once thin and trenchant, and would be wholly un- 
deserving of notice did it not contain a faulty historical 
view, which Macaulay never laid aside to the end of his 
life. The error consists in fastening the odium of perse- 
cution and tolerance as a peculiar reproach on the Govern- 
ment of Barleigh and Elizabeth. " What can be said in 
defence of a ruler who is at once indifferent and intoler- 
ant ?" he asks. If the Queen had only had the virtue 
and enlightenment of More and L'Hospital, the whole of 
our history for the last two hundred and fifty years would 
have worn another colour. " She had the happiest op- 
portunity ever vouchsafed to any sovereign of establishing 
perfect freedom of conscience throughout her dominions, 
without danger to her Government, without scandal to 



•78 MACAULAY. [chap. 

any large party among her subjects." Any addition to 
the enlightenment and patience of the capricious vixen 
who then ruled England would, no doubt, have been a 
great boon to her subjects and ministers, but it is sup- 
posing extraordinary eflBcacy even in the virtue of Queen 
Elizabeth to imagine that it could have influenced our 
history for two hundred and fifty years after her death. 
But Macaiilay must have known that uniformity in religion 
was considered in the sixteenth century an indispensable 
condition of stable civil government, and that by all par- 
ties and sects. " Persecution for religious heterodoxy in 
all its degrees was in the sixteenth century the principle, 
as well as the practice, of every church. It was held incon- 
sistent with the sovereignty of the magistrate to permit 
any religion but his own ; inconsistent with his duty to 
suffer any but the true."^ Bacon said : " It is certain 
that heresies and schisms are of all others the greatest 
scandals, yea, more than corruption of manners.'"^ It is 
against all equity to blame one or two individuals for a 
universal error. Yet Macaulay constantly dwells on the 
persecutions of Elizabeth's reign, as if they were marked 
by peculiar short-sightedness and malignity. He does it 
in the essay on Hallam, and in the first chapter of the 
History^ though in less peremptory language. There can 
be no doubt that he knew the facts perfectly well. But, 
as often happened with him, knowledge did not mount up 
into luminous general views. Persecution had long been 
proved to be bad ; Elizabeth persecuted ; therefore she 
was to be blamed. The temper of the whole age is not 
taken into the account. 

The article on Hallarri's Constitutional History is one 

^ Hallara's Literature of Europe, vol. ii. p. 343. 
5 Essay iii. 



iii.j THE "ESSAYS." 79 

of the best. It is one of the most strenuous argumenta. 
tive pieces Macaulay ever wrote. Fiercely polemical in its 
assault on the Tory version of English history, it may be 
regarded as a compendium of Whig principles in usiim 
■popiili. Indeed, its opinions are somewhat more than 
Whig. It belongs to that small group of articles which 
were written before the author was plunged in the daily 
strife of politics and ceaseless round of business (the oth- 
ers are those on Milton^ Machiavelli, and History)^ and 
they show, I venture to think, a speculative reach and 
openness of mind which were never recovered in the active 
life of subsequent years. The vindication of the charac- 
ter of Cromwell is as spirited as it is just, and really gives 
the outline which Carlyle filled in many years after. 

The article on the Memorials of Hampden is graceful 
and touching. The tone of pious reverence for the great 
Puritan champion makes it one of his most harmonious 
pieces. The essay on Milton is only remarkable for show- 
ing the early maturity of his powers, but on that ground 
it is very remarkable. With the article on Sir William 
Temple we enter upon a new stage of Macaulay's develop- 
ment as a writer and an artist. The articles he wrote for 
the Edinburgh Review after his return from India, in 
1838, are markedly superior to those he wrote before 
leaving England. The tone is much quieter, yet the 
vivacity is not diminished ; the composition is more 
careful, sustained, and even. The Sir William Temple 
was the first of the post-Indian articles, and it is one of 
the best he ever wrote. If one wanted to give an intel- 
ligent foreign critic a good specimen of Macaulay — a 
specimen in which most of his merits and fewest of his 
faults are collected in a small compass — one could hardly 
do better than liive him the article on Sir William 



80 MACATILAY. [chap. 

Temple. The exti-aordinary variety of the piece, the fine 
colouring and judicious shading, the vivid interest, the 
weighty topics discussed gravely, the lighter accessories 
thrown in gracefully over and around the main theiiie, 
like arabesque work on a Moorish mosque, or flights of 
octaves and arpeggios in a sonata of Mozart, jnstly" entitle 
it to a high place, not only in Macaulay's writings, but in 
the literature of the age. Strange to say, it does not 
appear to have been a favourite with the public, if we 
may infer as much from the fact that it has not been 
printed separately ; yet no article deserves it better. It 
is a masterpiece of its kind. The article on Mackintosh 
calls for no remark. That on Walpole is interesting 
chiefly for tlie amusing animosity which Macaulay nour- 
ished towards him. It was most unjust. He had far 
too low an opinion of Walpole's intellect, which was in 
many ways more penetrating and thoughtful than his 
own. Walpole did not call Montesquieu a Parisian cox- 
comb, but the very moment the Esprit des Lois appeared 
pronounced it the best book that ever was written. 
Walpole's generous sentiments on the slave-trade, half a 
century in advance of public opinion on the- subject, 
should have been appreciated by a son of Zachary Ma- 
caulay. The two articles on the first WiHiam Pitt, writ- 
ten at ten years' interval, show the difference between 
Macaulay's earlier and later manner very clearly. The 
first is full of dash, vigour, and interest, but in a some- 
what boisterous tone of high spirits, which at times runs 
dangerously near to bad taste. As, for instance : 

" In this perplexity Newcastle sent for Pitt, hugged 
him, patted him, smirked at him, wept over him, and 
lisped out the highest compliments and the most splendid 
promises. The King, who had hitherto been as sulky as 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 8i 

possible, would be civil to him at the levee^"^ etc., etc. 
Nothing of this kind will be found in the second article 
(the last Macaulay ever wrote for the Edinburgh Review), 
but, on the contrary, great dignity and gravity, which re- 
call the best pages of the History. He was, indeed, writ- 
ing the History at this moment, and he was enjoying a 
literary leisure such as he had never enjoyed before. He 
also was losing the strongly marked characteristics of a 
party man, and gravitating to that central and neutral 
position which he occupied with regard to politics in his 
later years. The fact is worth alluding to, as there seems 
still to survive a notion that Macaulay from first to last 
remained a narrow and bitter Whig. Those who hold 
this view may consider the following passage : 

" The Whig, who during three Parliaments had never given one vote 
against the Court, and who was ready to sell his soul for the Comp- 
troller's staff or for the Great Wardrobe, still professed to draw his 
l)()litical doctrines from Locke and Milton, still worshipped the mem- 
ory of Pym and Hampden, and would still, on the 30th of January, 
take his glass to the man in the nrask and then to the man who 
would do it without a mask. The Tory, on the other hand, while he 
reviled the mild and temperate Walpole as a deadly enemy of liberty, 
could see nothing to reprobate in the iron tyranny of Strafford and 
Laud, But, whatever judgment the Whig or the Tory of that age 
might pronounce on transactions long past, there can be no doubt 
that, as respected practical questions then pending, the^Tory was a 
reformer — and indeed an intemperate and, indiscreet reformer — while 
the Whig was a Conservative, even to bigotry. . . . Thus, the succes- 
sors of the old Cavaliers had turned demagogues ; the successors of 
the old Roundheads had turned courtiers. Yet it was long before 
their mutual animosity began to abate ; for it is the nature of par- 
ties to retain their original enmities far more firmly than their orig- 
inal principles. During many years a generation of Whigs, whom 
Sydney would have spurned as slaves, continued to wage deadly war 
with a generation of Tories whom Jeffreys would have hanged for 
republicans." 



82 MACAULAY. [chap. 

The Pitts, both father and son, seem to have had an 
Unusual attraction for Macaulay, and he wrote of them 
with more sympathy and insight than of any other states- 
man except King- William III. His biography of the 
younger Pitt is, perhaps, the most perfect thing that he 
has left. It is not an histoi-ical essay, but a genuine 
" Life," and it is impossible to overpraise either the plan 
or the execution. Nearly all the early faults of his 
rhetorical manner have disappeared; there is no elo- 
quence, no declamation, but a lofty moral impressiveness 
which is very touching and noble. It was written when 
he saw his own death to be near; and although he had 
none of Johnson's " horror of the last," there is a depth 
and solemnity of tone in this "Life" to which he never 
attained before. Pitt's own stately and majestic charac- 
ter would seem to have chastened and elevated his style, 
which recalls the masculine dignity, gravity, and calm 
peculiar to the higher strains of Roman eloquence. The 
little work deserves printing by itself on " papier de 
Chine," in Elzevir type, by Lemerre, Qaantin, or the 
Librairie des Bibliophiles. 

Very different are the two famous Indian articles on 
Clive and Warren Hastings. In these we find no Attic 
severity of diction, but all the pomp and splendour of 
Asiatic eloquence. It is not unsuitable to the occasion; 
a somewhat gorgeous magnificence is not out of place in 
the East. There is no need to dwell on pieces so univer- 
sally and justly popular.* They belong, it need not be 

' It is vexatious to be forced to add that the historical fidelity of 
the fine Essay on Warren Hastings is in many places open to more 
than suspicion. A son of the Chief-justice of Bengal has shown 
{^Memoirs of Sir Elijah Impey, Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1840) that 
Macaulay has been guilty at least of very reckless statements. He 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 83 

said, to his second and better manner; the rhetoric, though 
proud and high-stepping enough, is visibly under restraint 
and amenable to the curb. There was a particular reason 
why Macaulay was so successful in the articles on the two 
Pitts and the two Indian Pro-consuls. They were men 
whose character he could thoroughly understand and large- 
ly admire.. Taken all round, his insight into men's bosoms 
was not deep, and was decidedly limited. Complex and 
involved characters, in which the good and evil were inter- 
woven in odd and original ways, in which vulgar and ob- 
vious faults or vices concealed deeper and rarer qualities 
underneath, were beyond his ken. In men like Rousseau, 
Byron, Boswell, even Walpole, he saw little more than all 
the world could , see — those patent breaches of conven- 
tional decorum and morality which the most innocent 
young person could join him in condemning. But the 
great civic and military qualities — resolute courage, prompt- 
itude, self-command, and firmness of purpose — he could 
thoroughly understand and warmly admire. His style is 
always animated by a warmer glow and a deeper note 
when he celebrates high deeds of valour or fortitude ei- 
ther in the council or the field. There was an heroic fibre 
in him, which the peaceful times in which he lived, and 
the peaceful occupations in which he passed his days, 
never adequately revealed. 

Foreign History Growp} — Of these five articles there is 

was not, one likes to think, intentionally and wittingly unfair; but 
he was liable to become inebriated with his own rhetoric till he lost 
the power of weighing evidence. The old superstitious belief in 
Macaulay's accuracy is a creed of the past; but one cannot help re- 
gretting that he never saw the propriety or even the necessity of 
either answering or admitting the grave reflections on his truthful- 
ness made in Mr. Barwell Impey's book. 

' Machiavelli, Mirabeau, Von Ranke, Frederic, Barere. 



84 MACAULAY. [chap. 

only one over wbich we can linger. The Machiavelli is 
ingenious and wide ; but its main thesis — that the Italians 
had a monopoly of perfidy in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries — is untenable and almost absurd. The Mirabeau 
is sprightly, but it contains some very commonplace errors 
— for instance, that the death of the Duke of Burgundy 
was a serious loss to good government in France. As to 
the Frederic, it might pass muster before Carlyle wrote on 
the subject : it has little interest now. The article on 
Barere is a most savage philippic against one of the most 
odious characters in history. Whether he deserved so 
sumptuous an execution may. be doubted. Alone remains 
the famous article on the History of the Popes, which not 
only bespeaks attention by reason of its subject and the 
point of view from which that subject is regarded, but be- 
cause it is apparently considered by some persons as valu- 
able and important in itself. It is very far indeed from 
being either. If the articles on Temple and Pitt sliow 
Macaulay's good side, this article on the Popes show^s his 
less favourable side in an equal degree. It was not a sub- 
ject which he was well qualified to treat, even if he had 
done his best and given himself fair play. Circumstances 
and his own temperament combined prevented him from 
doing either one or the other. 

The real subject of the article, though nominally Ranke's 
book, is to ask the question, Why did Protestantism cease 
to spread after the end of the sixteenth century ? and why 
did the Church of Rome recover so much of the ground 
that she had lost in the early years of the Reformation ? 
The inquiry was an interesting one, and worthy of a care- 
ful answer. But the answer could only be found or given 
by a student who could investigate with freedom, and who 
was in a position to speak his mind. To write with one 



hi; the "ESSAYS/' 85 

eye on the paper and with the other on the susceptibilities 
of the religious world, was not a method that could lead to 
results of any value. And Macaulay comes to no result. 
He does not even reach a conclusion. The question with 
which he starts, and which is repeated again with great 
solemnity at the end of the article, is not answered, nor is 
an answcr*even attempted. He displays in his most elab- 
orate manner 1k>w strange and surprising it is that the 
Roman Church should survive the many attacks made 
upon her; how singular it is that when Papists now for- 
sake their religion they become infidels, and not Protes- 
tants ; and when they forsake their infi<lelity, instead of 
stopping half way in some Protestant faith, they go back 
to Romanism. At the time of the Reformation, he says, 
this was not the case. " Whole nations then renounced 
Popery, without ceasing to believe in a first cause, in a 
future life, or the divine mission of Jesus." This he con- 
siders a " most remarkable fact," and worthy of " serious 
consideration." But he does not give a hint of an ex- 
planation of the fact — unless the singular preface to the 
historical portion of the article may be so considered. 

The purpose of this introduction is to discuss whether 
the growth of knowledge and science has any influence in 
the way of promoting the rationality of men's religious 
opinions; and Macaulay decides that it has not. Science 
may increase to any amount, but that will never have the 
least effect on either natural or revealed religion. 

"A Christian of the fifth century with a Bible was neither better 
nor worse situated than a Christian of the nineteenth century with a 
Bible — candour and natural acuteness being, of course, supposed 
equal. It matters not at all that the compass, printing, gunpowder, 
steam, gas, vaccination, and a thousand other discoveries and inven- 
tions, which were unknown in the fifth century, are familiar to the 



86 MACAULAY. [chap. 

nineteenth. None of these discoveries and inventions have the 
smallest bearing on the question whether man is justified by faith 
alone, or whether the invocation of saints is an orthodox practice. 
It seems to us, therefore, that we have no security for the future 
against the prevalence of any theological error that has prevailed in 
time past among Christian men." 

He goes on to say that when he reflects that a man of 
such wisdom and virtue as Sir Thomas More believed in 
Transubstantiation, he is unable to see why that doctrine 
should not be believed by able and honest men till the 
end of time. No progress of science can make that doc- 
trine more absurd than it is already, or than it ever has 
been. " The absurdity of the literal interpretation was as 
great and as obvious in the sixteenth century as it is nowy 
In fact, the human mind is given up to caprice on these 
matters, and obeys no ascertainable law. " No learning, 
no sagacity, affords a security against the greatest errors 
on subjects relating to the invisible world." Whether a 
man believes in sense or nonsense with regard to religion 
is merely a matter of accident. But if that is so, what is 
there in the least surprising that the Church of Rome has 
survived so many attacks and perils? why is that fact 
" most remarkable " and " worthy of serious considera- 
tion?" It is expressly stated that reason has nothing to 
do with these matters. Any old heresy may come to life 
again at any moment. Any nonsense may be believed by 
men of learning and sagacity. Then why wonder that 
one particular form of nonsense is believed ? It is a waste 
of time to marvel at the effects of acknowledged chance. 
If, indeed, the phenomena recur with considerable regu- 
larity and persistence, we may have good reason to suspect 
a law. In either case Macaulay's procedure was illegiti- 
mate. Roman Catholicism is capable of rational explana*; 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 87 

tion, or it is not. If it is, let the inquiry into the moral, 
social, and intellectual causes of its origin be soberly con- 
ducted. If it is not capable of rational explanation, why 
pronounce its prevalence worthy of consideration and most 
remarkable ? 

But what can be said of the passage in which a Christian 
of the fifth century with a Bible is declared to be neither 
better nor worse situated than a Christian of the nineteenth 
century with a Bible ? This is to assert that the lapse of 
time has no effect on the way in which men read, under- 
stand, and interpret ancient writings. With regard to 
any literature such a remark would be most erroneous; 
but with regard to the Scriptural literature — the Bible — 
it is erroneous to absurdity. If there is any one thing 
which varies from age to age more than another, it is the 
way in which men regard the writings of past generations, 
whether these be poetry, philosophy, history, or law. But 
the point of view from which religious writings are re- 
garded is exposed to perturbations of exceptional violence. 
And yet Macaula}^ deliberately wrote that the lapse of 
fourteen hundred years had, and could have, no effect on 
the study of the Scriptures — that a Christian reading the 
Bible amid the falling ruins of the Roman Empire was in 
the same position as a Christian reading the Bible in pros- 
peious England in the reign of Queen Victoria. A more 
inept remark was hardly ever made by a man of educa- 
tion. With regard to what ancient writings did Macaulay 
find himself neither better nor worse situated than a man 
of the fifth century ? Did he read Plato, as Plotinus or 
Proclus did ? Did he read Cicero, as Macrobius did ? or 
Virgil, as Servius did ? or Homer, as Eustathius did (a cen- 
tury or two makes no difference) ? Did he even read Pope, 
as Johnson did, or Congreve, or Cowley, or any writer that 



88 MACAULAY. [chap. 

ever lived in an age removed from liis own ? But the 
changes of mental attitude with regard to secular writeis 
are trivial as compared to the changes which take place 
with regard to religious writers. In a similar spirit, he 
says that the absurdity of the literal interpretation was as 
great and as obvious in the sixteenth century as it is now. 
This is tantamount to saying that what appeared obviously 
absurd to him was always obviously absurd to everybody. 
That the human mind in the course of its development 
has gone through great changes in its conceptions of the 
universe — of man's position in it — of the order of nature 
— seems to have been a notion which he never even re- 
motely suspected. Did he think that the Pagan Mythol- 
ogy was as obviously absurd in the time of Homer as it is 
now ? Did he find the Hindoo Mythology obviously ab- 
surd to religious Brahmins? This is the writing of a man 
who cannot by possibility conceive any point of view but 
his own. 

The remainder of the article is devoted to a description 
of what he names the four uprisings of the human intel- 
lect against the Church of Rome. Mapaulay painting a 
picture, and Macaulay discussing a religious or philosoph- 
ical question, are two different persons. There- is some 
very attractive and graceful scene-painting in this part of 
the article. The Albigensian Crusade is narrated with 
great spirit, brevity, and accuracy. What he calls the 
second rising up, in the fourteenth centiiry, was not one 
at all. It was a quarrel between an ambitious king and 
an ambitious pope, in which the latter got the worst of it. 
His knowledge here is very thin : as when he says that 
" the secular authority, long unduly depressed, regained 
the ascendant with startling rapidity." What secular au- 
thority had been depressed ? There had not been any 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 89 

secular authority in France from the fall of the Carling 
Empire till the gradual establishment of the Crpetian 
Monarchy under Philip Augustus and his successors. Feu- 
dalism had reigned supreme for three hundred years ; and 
feudalism in France was the negation of secular authority, 
because it was incompatible with any general government. 
But we cginnot dwell on this point, any more than we can 
on his treatment of the Reformation, which is full of small 
slips ; as, for instance, that " the spirit of Savonarola had 
nothing in common with the spirit of religious Protes- 
tantism." Luther, at any rate, did not hold that view, as 
he republished in 1523 Savonarola's Commentary on the 
Psalms. Again, he says that Catholicism was associated 
in the public miud of Spain with liberty as well as victory 
and dominion. As regards victory and dominion the re- 
mark is true ; but liberty ! The reference is to the period 
of the Spanish conquest of Mexico by Cortez ; that is to 
say, to the despotic reign of Charles V. We have only 
space to refer to the odd comparison, or rather contrast, 
which he draws between the-Church of England and the 
Church of Rome, the object of which is to show that the 
policy of the latter " is the very masterpiece of human 
wisdom," whereas the policy of the Church of England 
has been very much the reverse. It takes him three pages 
to develop his idea, but it all comes to this, that the 
Church of Rome knows how to utilize enthusiasm, and 
the Church of England does not. " Place Ignatius at Ox- 
ford : he is certain to become the head of a formidable 
secession. Place John Wesley at Rome : he is certain to 
be the first general of a new society devoted to the inter- 
ests and honour of the Church." Now, this sentence, and 
the whole argument of which it is a part, is very singular, 
as showing that Macaulay was often not fully master of 



90 MACAULAT. [chap. 

the knowledge which we know that he possessed. When 
he paints a picture his hand never shakes ; his imagina- 
tion for that purpose holds all the facts he requires in 
vivid reality before him. But when he attempts to gen- 
eralize, to co-ordinate facts in a general expression, he 
breaks down. As in the present instance : the whole his- 
tory of the Reformation, both in England and on the Con- 
tinent, was there to show him that the profound wisdom 
he ascribed to the Church of Rome existed only in his 
own fancy. Greater caution in handling Luther, greater 
prudence with regard to Henry VIII., might, it is well 
known, have prevented a schism. But the case of the Jan- 
senists was enough to show him how hasty his view was, 
if he had given himself time to reflect. He was well ac- 
quainted with the facts. In this very article he refers to 
the destruction of Port Royal. But what were the Jan- 
senists but the Wesleyans of the Church of Rome, with a 
singular closeness of analogy ? He reproaches the English 
Church with the defection of Wesley, and no doubt a great 
deal may be said as regards the unwisdom which allowed 
or caused it. But what was that compared to the treat- 
ment of the Jansenists by the Church of Rome? As a 
matter of fact, from the time of St. Cyran and Antony 
Arnauld to the time of Lammenais and Dollinger, the 
Church of Rome has never hesitated to take the shortest 
way with dissentients in her own communion, " to spue 
them out of her mouth," with every mark of detestation 
and abhorrence. On the other hand, of all long-suffering- 
Churches, tolerant and docile of contradiction to the verge 
of feebleness, the Church of England is perhaps the most 
remarkable. And Macaulay knew this quite well. 

Controversial Group.^ — Controversy is at once the most 

' Mill, Saddler, Southey, Gladstoue. 



III. J THE "ESSAYS." 91 

popular and the most ephemeral form of composition. 
Nothing seems more important at the moment : nothing 
less so when the moment has passed. Of all the endless 
controversies of which the world has ever been full, only 
the fewest survive in human memory ; and they do so 
either because they have been real turning-points in the 
history of 'thought, or because something of permanent 
value outside the immediate subject of contention was 
struck out in the conflict. Pascal's Provincial Letters are 
the supreme example of a controversial piece on which 
time seems to have no effect. But Pascal had advantages 
siK'h as no other controversialist has ever united. First 
of all, he did not kill his adversaries, generally the most 
fatal thing for his own permanent fame that a contro- 
versialist can do. The Jesuits still exist, and are still 
hated by many. Those who bear ill-will to the Society 
find in the Provincial Letters the most exquisite expres- 
sion of their dislike. Secondly, Pascal was the first clas- 
sic prose writer of his country. On a lower, but still a 
very high, level stands Bentley's dissertation on Phalaris. 
Bentley did kill his adversary dead, but it was with mis- 
siles of pure gold, which the world carefully preserves. 
Macaulay, it need hardly be remarked, did nothing of 
this kind. He took his share with courage and ability 
in the battle for Liberal views forty and fifty years ago, 
and that is nearly all that can be said. He kept the posi- 
tion — he repelled* the enemy; he did not advance and 
occupy new ground, and give a new aspect to the whole 
campaign. As he suppressed the articles on Mill, with a 
delicacy which did him honour, they need hardly be re- 
ferred to. Tt has been well pointed out that there is a 
contradiction between his principles and his conduct on 
this occasion. "He ought by all his intellectual sympa- 
G 5 



92 MACAULAY. [chap. 

thies to be a Utilitarian. Yet he abuses Utilitarianism 
with the utmost contempt, and has no alternative theory 
to suggest.'" But coherence of thought, we have seen, 
was not his characteristic. The article on Southey is 
much more pleasant reading. If while admiring its vig- 
our we miss a lightness of touch, we should remember 
that it was written two years before the passing of the 
Reform Bill, when the minds of men had become heated 
to a degree of fierceness. The admiration expressed for 
the industrial regime strikes a reader of the present day 
as oddly sentimental and impassioned. But the indus- 
trial regime was a very different thing in 1830 from what 
it is in 1882, and Macaulay was the last man to forecast 
the future evils of the manufacturing system. As usual, 
he shows his strength, not in thinking, but in drawing. 
The following passage has always appeared to us as one 
of the best in his earlier and less chastened manner : 

" Part of this description might, perhaps, apply to a much greater 
man, Mr. Burke. But Mr. Burke assuredly possessed an understana- 
ing admirably fitted for the investigation of truth- — an understandmg 
stronger than that of any statesman, active or speculative, of the 
eighteenth century — stronger than everything, except his own fierce 
and ungovernable sensibility. Hence he generally chosehis side like 
a fanatic, and defended it like a philosopher. His conduct, in the 
most important events of his life — at the time of the impeachment 
of Hastings, for example, and at the time of the French Kevolution — 
seems to have been prompted by those feelings and motives which 
Mr. Coleridge has so happily described : ' 

' Stormy pity, and cherish'd lure 
Of pomp, and proud precipitance of soul.' 

Hindostan, with its vast cities, its gorgeous pagodas, its long-de- 
scended dynasties, its stately etiquette, excited in a mind so capa- 

* Hours in a Library^ by Leslie Stephen, 3rd series. 



iii.j THE "ESSAYS." 93 

cious, so imii^inative, and so susceptible, the most intense interest. 
The peculiarities of the costume, of the manners, and of the laws, 
the very mystery \vhich hung over the language and origin of the 
people, seized his imagination. To plead in Westminster Hall, in the 
name of the English people, at the bar of the English nobles, for 
great nations and kings separated from him by half the world, seem- 
ed to him the height of human glory. Again, it is not difficult to 
perceive tha.t his hostility to the French Revolution principally arose 
from the vexation which he felt at having all his old political associa- 
tions disturbed, at seeing the well-known boundary-marks of states 
obliterated, and the names and distinctions with which the history 
of Europe had been filled for ages, swept away. He felt like an 
antiquary whose shield had been scoured, or a connoisseur who found 
his Titian retouched. But however he came by an opinion, he had 
no sooner got it than he did his best to make out a legitimate title 
to it. His reason, like a spirit in the service of an enchanter, though 
spellbound, was still mighty. It did whatever work his passions 
and his imagination might impose. But it did that work, however 
arduous, with marvellous dexterity and vigour. His course was not 
determined by argument ; but he could defend the wildest course by 
arguments more plausible than those by which common men support 
opinions which they have adopted after the fullest deliberation. 
Reason has scarcely ever displayed, even in those well-constituted 
minds of which she occupies the throne, so much power and energy 
as in the lowest offices of that imperial servitude." 

The article on Mr. Gladstone's book, The State in its 
Relations with the Church, perhaps interests us more than 
it should, by reason of the courteous but severe handling- 
given to "the young man of unblemished character and 
distinguished parliamentary talents — the rising hope of 
those stern and unbending Tories," who have long since 
looked in another direction for hope and leadership. As 
regards Macaulay's main contention, that the spiritual 
and temporal powers should be kept apart as much as 
possible, few nowadays would dispute it. Mr. Stephen 
doubts whether we can draw the line between the spir- 



94 MACAULAY. [chap. 

itual and the secular/ And in our age of mixed and 
motley creeds, representing every degree of belief and 
unbelief, the task may be arduous. The real difficulty is 
this, that the State always asserts implicitly a creed or 
doctrine, by its legislation, even when most careful to 
avoid doing so in an explicit manner. Not to be with a 
religious doctrine, is to be against it. Even to ignore its 
claims or existence, is quoad hoc to be hostile to them. 
When the State establishes civil marriage, it puts an 
affront on the sacrament of marriage ; when it undertakes 
to teach the commoner elements of morality in its 
schools, but refuses to further the inculcation of the 
Christian version of those elements, it is so far slighting 
Christianity. The result is ceaseless and illogical com- 
promise, extending over the whole field of politics. And 
this condition of things can only be terminated either by 
the whole population becoming Christian, and identical 
in creed, or wholly agnostic. It by no means suited Ma- 
caulay's purpose to say this in the pages of the Edin- 
burgh Review. Perhaps he did not see his way so far. 
His maxim was — " Remove always practical grievances. 
Do not give a thought to anomalies which are not griev- 
ances." Thus, he was for maintaining the Episcopal 
Church in England, and the Presbyterian Church in Scot- 
land ; and for paying the Eoman Catholic clergy in Ire- 
land. Against these practical makeshifts there is nothing 
to be said, if they produce peace. But in the domain of 
speculation they have no place. Mr. Gladstone's position 
— perhaps not very logically maintained — was, that the 
State was bound to be Christian, after the fashion of the 
Church of England. The counter position is, that the 
State is bound to be agnostic, after a fashion which no- 
^ Hours in a Library ^ 3rd series. 



iii.l THE "ESSAYS." 95 

where completely exists. To say this in 1839 would 
have given rise to unbounded scandal. Macaulay was so 
hampered in his argument that he has been accused " of 
begging the question by evading the real difficulty." 
That may be true enough from one point of view ; but he 
could hardly have been expected to write, in that day, 
vary differently from what he did* 

Critical Group.^— When Macvey Napier requested Ma- 
caulay to write for him an article on Scott he made answer, 
" I assure you that I would willingly, and even eagerly, un- 
dertake, the subject which you propose, if I thought that I 
should serve you by doing so. But depend upon it, you 
do not know what you are asking for. ... I am not suc- 
cessful in analyzing the works of genius. I have written 
several things on historical, political, and moral questions, 
of which, on the fullest reconsideration, I am not ashamed, 
and by which I am willing to be estimated ; but I never 
have written a page of criticism on poetry or the fine arts 
which I would not burn if I had the power." Nothing 
could be more frank, modest, and true. After such a can- 
did avowal it would be ungracious to find fault with pieces 
which their author wished to destroy. But it is not clear 
that he meant to include in this condemnation all the arti- 
cles in this group : especially those on Johnson and Bacon 
might be supposed excepted, and to come under the head 
of those " moral questions " in his treatment of which he 
did not consider himself to have failed. They are much 
more moral studies than literary criticisms. Now, we have 
had occasion to notice that Macaulay's insight into charac- 
ter, unless it was exceptionally free from knots and straight 
in the grain, was fitful and uncertain. Neither Johnson 

' Dryden, R. Montgomery, Byron, Bunyan, Johnson, Bacon, Hunt, 
Addison, 



96 MACAULAY. [chap. 

nor Bacon were men whom be could have been expected 
to see tbrougb with a wide and tolerant eye. With John- 
son Boswell is inseparably associated ; and Macaulay has 
spoken of him also with abundant emphasis. To these 
three, therefore, our remarks will be confined. 

His paradox about Boswell is well known, and consists 
in tracing the excellence of his book to the badness of the 
author. Other men, we are told, have attained to literary 
eminence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained it 
hy reason of his weaknesses. " If he had not been a great 
fool, he would not have been a great writer." " He had 
quick observation and a retentive memory. These quali- 
ties, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarce- 
ly have sufficed to make him conspicuous. But as he was 
a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him 
immortal." Sense and virtue have in that case a great 
deal to answer for, in depriving the world of masterly 
biographies. How it happened that the best of books was 
written by the most arrant of fools Macaulay neglects to 
explain. Blind chance, or a fortuitous concourse of atoms, 
have been supposed to offer a sufficient account of the ori- 
gin of the world ; and apparently something similar was 
imagined here. Critical helplessness could hardly go fur- 
ther. Still, although Macaulay habitually fails to analyze 
and exhibit the merits of literary work, he rarely overlooks 
them. Boswell, he says, had neither logic, eloquence, wit, 
learning, taste, nor so much of the reasoning faculty as to 
be capable even of sophistry. " He is always ranting or 
twaddling?" What, then, is there to praise in his book? 
The reports of Johnson's conversations, and those of the 
Club, might be the supposed answer. But did Macaulay, 
so able an artist himself, think nothing of the great and 
rare art of mise en scene? Did he suppose that a short- 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 97 

hand writer's report of those famous wit-combats would 
have done as well, or better? The fact is, that no dram- 
atist or novelist of the whole century surpassed, or even 
equalled, Bosvvell in rounded, clear, and picturesque pre- 
sentation — in real dramatic faculty. Macaulay's attack on 
his moral chamcter is even more offensive. He calls him 
an idolater and a slave ; says he was like a creeper, which 
must cling to some stronger plant; and that it was only 
by accident that he did not fasten himself on Wilkes or 
Whitfield. Nothing could be more unjust, more unintelli- 
gent. Boswell's attitude to Johnson, as was so well point- 
ed out by Carlyle, in an article which it is difficult not to 
regard in some respects as a covert answer to this of Ma- 
caulay's, was one of boundless reverence and love to a su- 
perior in intellect and moral worth. His feeling towards 
Paoli was of a similar kind. This fervent hero-worship 
Macaulay cannot in the least understand. In his view it 
was mere base sycophancy and toad-eating. Boswell, he 
says, " was always laying himself at the feet of some emi- 
nent man, and begging to be spit upon and trampled on." 
Well might Carlyle say that the last thing that Boswell 
would have done, if he had been a mere flunkey, would 
have been to act as he did. Johnson was never of much 
importance in the great world of fashion, into which he 
penetrated very nearly as little at the end as at the begin- 
ning of his career. Boswell could, as a Scotch Tory of 
good birth and an eldest son, easily have found much more 
serviceable patrons to whom to pay his court than the rag- 
ged, ill-tempered old scholar, who gave him many more 
kicks than halfpence. Macaulay might have recollected 
that he himself once paid his court to an insolent aristo- 
crat, Lady Holland, who ordered her guests about as if 
they were footmen ; that, though he certainly did not 



98 MACAULAY. [chap. 

waste his time in running after obscure sages, be knew 
quite well how, by a judicious mixture of independence 
and usefulness, to attract the notice of a powerful Minister, 
Boswell's faults and vices are obvious enough ; but if he 
was the insufferable bore and noodle that Macaulay de- 
scribes, how came Johnson — a man of masculine sense — 
to make him his intimate, to spend months with him in 
the daily contact of a long journey, and then pronounce 
him " the best travelling companion in the world ?" 

We now come to Johnson. Besides the article in the 
Edinburgh Review, we have the biography published in 
the Encyclopedia Britannica, written twenty -five years 
afterwards. The latter, as belonging to his last and best 
manner, is more chaste in language, and more kindly and 
tolerant in tone, than the essay ; still, it is essentially on 
the same lines of thought and sentiment. We have the 
same clear perception of the external husk of Johnson ; 
but there is as little penetration into his deeper character 
in the one case as in the other. There is nothing unfair 
or ungenerous ; especially in the biography there seems a 
fixed resolve to be as generous as possible ; but the appre- 
ciation is inadequate, and chiefly confined to the surface. 
The following is nearly Macaulay's masterpiece'in super- 
ficial portraiture, as showing his tendency to dwell on the 
outside appearance of character and little besides : 

" Johnson grown old — Johnson in the fulness of his fame, and in 
the enjoyment of a competent fortune, is better known to us than 
any other man in history. Everything about him — his coat, his wig, 
his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St.Vitus's dance, his rolling walk, 
his blinking eye, the outward signs which too clearly marked his ap- 
probation of his dinner, his insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal 
pie with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touch- 
ing the posts as he walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring up 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." • 99 

scraps of orange peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight disputa- 
tions, his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntitigs, his puffings, his 
vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic wit, his vehement 
insolence, his fits of tempestuous rage, his queer inmates — old Mr. 
Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat Hodge, and negro Frank — all 
are as familiar to us as objects by which we have been surrounded 
from our childhood." 



There is all through both pieces too much dwelling on 
Johnson's coarse manners, fits of ill-temper, and tendency 
to over-eat himself. These details are welcome in a bi- 
ography, but out of place in a critical estimate. The only 
point of view from which Johnson can be properly judged 
is that which Macaulay never took up — the religious point 
of view. Johnson was an ardent believer, ever fighting 
with doubt. His heart was full of faith, while his intel- 
lect was inclined to scepticism. A great deal of his impa- 
tience and irritability arose from this dual condition of his 
mind and sentiments. He felt that if he listened to unbe- 
lief he would be lost. He was always wanting more evi- 
dence than he could get for -supernatural things. That 
was why he hunted after the Cock Lane Ghost, and was 
always fond of stories that seemed to confirm the belief in 
a life beyond the grave. He disbelieved the earthquake 
of Lisbon, because it seemed to reflect on the benevolence 
of God. It is this insecure but ardent piety which gives 
him an interest and a pathos from which the common 
run of contented believers are generally free. Next to his 
piety, the profound tenderness of Johnson's nature is his 
most marked trait. When they are fusel together, as 
they sometimes were, the result is inexpressibly touching,' 
as in that notice in his diary of the death of his " dear old 
friend," Catherine Chambers. When we read of his in- 
cessant benevolence we can understand the love he inspired 
6* 



100 MACAULAY. [chap. 

in all who really knew him, which made Goldsmith say, 
" He has nothing of the bear but the skin ;" and Burke 
say, when he was out-talked by Johnson, to some one's re- 
gret, " It is enough for me to have rung the bell for him." 
These things are not exactly overlooked by Macaulay, but 
they are not brought out ; whereas Johnson's puffings, and 
gnintings, and perspiration when at his dinner, are made 
very prominent. 

We now come, not without reluctance, to look at the 
deplorable article on Bacon. 

The historical portion has only just lately received such 
an exposure at the hands of the late Mr. Spedding, that 
to dwell upon it here is as unnecessary as it would be 
impertinent. Two octavo volumes were not found more 
than sufficient to set forth the full proofs of Macaulay's 
quite astounding inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and even 
falsifications of truth. The only question that we can dis- 
cuss even for a moment in this place is, what could have 
been Macaulay's motive for writing with such passion and 
want of good faith against a man whom in the same breath 
he extolled even to excess ? We cannot suspect him — " a 
lump of good-nature " — of malignity. The probability is 
that his usual incapacity to see through an intricate char- 
acter led him into airing one of those moral paradoxes of 
which he was fond. A jarring contrast of incompatible 
qualities, so far from repelling very much attracted him in 
a character. He seems to have thought it good fun to 
expand Pope's line into an article of a hundred pages. 
One can imagine him thinking as he wrote, "What will 
they say to this ?" for the rest meaning no particular harm 
either to Bacon or any one. The piece has no moral 
earnestness about it, and is flippant in thought even when 
decorous in language. 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 101 

The object is .-i deliberate attack and invective against 
all higher speculation, which is branded as mere cant and 
hypocrisy. The philosophy of both Zeno and Epicurus, 
we are told, was a " garrulous, declaiming, canting, wran- 
gling philosophy." The philosophy of the ancients is 
pronounced *' barren." The ancient philosophers, in those 
very matters "for the sake of which they neglected all 
the vulgar interests of mankind, did nothing, and worse 
than nothing." " We know that the philosophers were 
no better than other men. From the testimony of friends 
as well as foes, ... it is plain that these teachers of virtue 
had all the vices of their neighbours with the additional 
vice of hypocrisy." Religion itself when allied with phi- 
losophy became equally pernicious. The great merit of 
Bacon was that he cleared his mind of all this rubbish. 
" He had no anointing for broken bones, no fine theories 
de Jinibus, no arguments to persuade men out of their 
senses. He knew that men and philosophers, as well as 
other men, do actually love life, health, comfort, honour, se- 
curity, the society of friends; and do actually dislike death, 
sickness, pain, poverty, disgrace, danger, separation from 
those to whom they are attached. He knew that religion, 
though it often regulates and modifies these feelings, sel- 
dom' eradicates them ; nor did he think it desirable for 
mankind that they should be eradicated." Much more is 
said against the ancient philosophers, and in favour of 
Bacon, who appears moreover to have had two peculiar 
merits ; first, that he never meddled with those enigmas 
" which have puzzled hundreds of generations, and will 
puzzle hundreds more " — the grounds of moral obligation 
and the freedom of the human will ; secondly, that he de- 
spised speculative theology as much as he despised specu- 
lative philosophy. In short, his peculiar and extraordinary 



102 MACAULAY. [chap. 

quality was that he was an l^itorrjQ, a mere common man, 
and that is precisely why he was so great a philosopher. 
" It was because he dug deep that he was able to pile 
high," deep digging being apparently the characteristic 
of the common man. 

The point especially deserving of notice in this extraor- 
dinary diatribe is, that all spiritual religion is as much 
aimed at as philosophy, though the attack is veiled with 
great prudence and sldll. But every word said against 
philosophy would apply equally against religion. Every 
sneer and gibe flung at Plato, Zeno, and Epictetus would 
equally serve against Thomas a Kempis, St. Francis of 
Sales, or Jeremy Taylor. It is not at all easy to deter- 
mine what could have induced Macaulay to commit this 
outrage. He is generally excessively observant of the 
bienseances. Was he avenging some old private grudge 
ao-ainst a Puritanical education ? Had he become convinced 
that spiritual aspirations were moonshine? There is cer- 
tainly a vehemence in his onslaught which almost points 
to a personal injury, as Porson said of Gibbon's attack on 
Christianity. In any case we must admit that on no other 
occasion did Macaulay descend so low as on this. No- 
where else has he given us such an insight into the limita- 
tions of his heart and understanding, and of his strangely 
imperfect knowledge, with all his reading. It would re- 
quire pages, where we have not room for sentences, to ex- 
pound the matter fully. Take one or two instances, mere- 
ly because they are short. He reproaches the ancient phi- 
losophy with having made no progress in- eight hundred 
years : " Look at the schools of this wisdom four centu- 
ries before the Christian era and four centuries after that 
era. Compare the men whom those schools formed at 
those two periods. Compare Plato and Libanius ; Pericles 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 103 

and Julian. This philosopliy confessed, nay, boasted, that 
for every end but one it was useless. Had it attained that 
one end?" It is difficult to handle the sciolism implied 
in such remarks and such a question. What had occurred 
between the dates specified — those of Pericles and Julian ? 
Only the conquest of the world by the Romans, the rise 
and fall of. the Roman Republic and Empire, the invasion 
of the barbarians, and the proximate dissolution of society. 
This is to count for nothing. The greatest revolution in 
human annals — the death throes, in short, of the old world 
— could not be expected to influence the course and value 
of speculation ! The thing to notice was, that Libanius 
was inferior to Plato, and Julian to Pericles, and that set- 
tled the point that the ancient philosophy was nothing but 
cant and hypocrisy. Again, we are asked to believe that 
it was through the perversity of a few great minds that 
the blessings of the experimental philosophy were so long 
withheld from the world. The human mind had been 
"misdirected;" "trifles occupied the sharp and vigorous 
intellects " of the Greeks and of the schoolmen. Socrates 
and Plato were the chief authors of this evil, which tainted 
the whole body of ancient philosophy " from the time of 
Plato downwards." Plato has to bear the enormous guilt 
of having " done more than any other person towards giv- 
ing the minds of speculative men that bent which they re- 
tained till they received from Bacon a new impulse in a 
diametrically opposite direction." Had it not been for 
these lamentable aberrations with which Macaulay says he 
has no patience, we should have had, no doubt, diving- 
bells, steam-engines, and vaccination in the time of the 
Peloponnesian war ; or why not say in the time of the Tro- 
jan war, or even of Noah's ark ? That society and the hu- 
man intellect have laws of organic growth, the stages of 



104 MACAULAY. [chap. 

which cannot be transposed, any more than the periods of 
youth and old age can be transposed in the life of an indi- 
vidual, was a conception which never dawned even faintly on 
Macaulay's mind. He was as little competent to speak of 
experimental science, which he belauded, as of philosophy, 
which he vilified. He says several times in various forms 
that science should only be cultivated for its immediate 
practical and beneficial results. He applauds Bacon because 
" he valued geometry chiefly if not solely on account of 
those uses which to Plato appeared so base," for his love 
of "those pursuits which directly tend to improve the 
condition of mankind," for the importance ascribed "to 
those arts which increase the outward comforts of our 
species ;" and he excuses any over-strength of statement 
in this matter by saying that it was an error in the right 
direction, and that he vastly prefers it to the opposite 
error of Plato. Now^, this shows that he failed to grasp 
the method of science as much as the method and import 
of philosophy. Science has never prospered until it has 
freed itself from bondage to the immediate wants of life 
— till it has pursued its investigations with perfect in- 
diflEerence as to the results and uses to which they may 
be applied. But it is needless to pursue the subject. 
The effect of the whole article is the same as that pro- 
duced by a man of rude manners making his way into 
a refined and well-bred company. With an unbecoming 
carriage and a loud voice he goes' up to the dignified 
dames — the ancient Philosophies — one after another and 
asks them what they do there ; mocks at their fine ways ; 
and finishes by telling them roundly that in his opinion 
they are all no better than they should be. Nothing 
that Macaulay has written has been more injurious to his 
fame as a serious thinker. 



III.] THE "ESSAYS." 105 

Nevertheless, say what we will, Macaiilay's Essays re- 
main a brilliant and fascinating page in English literature. 
The world is never persistently mistaken in such cases. 
Time enough has elapsed, since their publication, to sub- 
merge them in oblivion had they not contained a vital 
spark of genius which criticism is powerless to extinguish. 
If not wejls of original knowledge, they have acted like 
irrigating rills which convey and distribute the fertilizing 
waters from the fountain-head. The best would adorn 
any literature, and even the less successful have a pict- 
uresque animation, and convey an impression of power 
that will riot easily be matched. And, again, we need to 
bear in mind that they were the productions of a writer 
immersed in business, written in his scanty moments 
of leisure when most men would have rested or sought 
recreation. Macaulay himself was most modest in his 
estimate of their value, and resisted their republication as 
long as he could. It was the public that insisted on their 
re-issue, and few would be bold enough to deny that the 
public was right. 



CHAPTER IV. 

NARRATIVE OF MACAULAy's LIFE RESUMED UP TO THE 
APPEARANCE OF THE HISTORY. 

[1841-1848.] 

" Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "it is wonderful how little 
Garrick assumes. No, sir, Garrick fovtunmn reverenter 
hahuit. Then, sir, Garrick did not find, but made his 
way, to the tables, the levees, and almost the bedchambers 
of the great. If all this had happened to me, I should 
have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking 
before me to knock down everybody that stood in the 
way." One is reminded of these wise and kindly words 
from the rough but tender-hearted old moralist when 
reflecting on the uniform success and prosperity which 
attended Macaulay in everything he undertook. With 
the single exception of his failing to secure a place in the 
Tripos at Cambridge, which, after all, had no evil effects, 
as he obtained a Fellowship notwithstanding, he did not 
put his hand to a thing without winning loud applause. 
In his story there are no failures to record. The trials 
and straitened means of his eai-ly years arose from no 
fault of his. As soon as he began to rebuild the shat- 
tered fortunes of his family the work went on without 
break or interruption, and was triumphantly accomplished 
before he had reached his fortieth year. But he had 



CHAP. IV I THE ROMAN LAYS. 107 

done mucb more than restore his material circumstances: 
in the mean while he had acquired a wide and brilliant 
fame. He had made his way to the tables, the levees, 
and bedchambers of the great. A novus homo, he was 
.treated with the distinction which in our aristocratic so- 
ciety was at that time nearly always reserved for the so- 
called '^' weJl-born." And yet he, like Garrick, bore his 
honours, if not meekly^ yet without a particle of insolence 
or assumption, or the least symptom that his head had 
•been turned. And this was the result, not of religiouis 
or philosophic discipline, of a conscious moral cultivation 
of humility, and a sober spirit, but of mere, sweetness 
of nature and constitutional amiability. 

After his fall or, perhaps we should say, his rise from 
office he almost immediately proceeded to tempt fortune 
in a very perilous way. He put forth a volume of poems 
— the Lays of Ancient Rome. His eyes were quite open 
to the risk. To Napier, who had expressed doubts about 
the venture, he wrote : 

*' I do not wonder at your misgivings. I should have felt similar 
misgivings if I had learned that any person, however distinguished 
by talents and knowledge, whom I knew as a writer only by prose 
works, was about to publish a volume of poetry — had I seen adver- 
tised a poem by Mackintosh, by Dugald Stewart, or even by Burke, I 
should have augured nothing but failure ; and I am far from putting 
myself on a level with the least of the three." 

Few writers have surpassed Macaulay in that most useful 

of all gifts, a clear and exact knowledge of the reach and 

nature of his talents. It never stood him in better stead 

than on the present occasion. 

It will be remembered that he was engaged on the lay 

of Horatius when he was in Italy. But he had written 

two Lays while in India, and submitted them to Dr. Ar- 
H 



108 MACAULAY. [chap. 

nold of Rugby, who had spoken of them with high praise. 
The subject had thus been a hmg tiroe in his mind, and 
the composition, though no doubt often interrupted, had 
been most careful and deliberate. Macaulay had the fac- 
ulty of rhyme in no common degree, and he was also a 
scientific prosodian. He consulted his friends about his 
verses, and, what w^as less common, he took their advice 
when they pointed out defects. Several years off and on, 
thus employed on four poems, which together do not 
amount to two - thirds of Marmion^ were a guarantee 
against hasty work ; and the result corresponds. The ver- 
sification of the Lays is technically without blemish, and 
this correctness has been purchased by no sacrifice of 
vigour. On the contrary, Macaulay's prose at its best is 
not so terse as his verse. He had naturally a tendency to 
declamation. In the Lays this tendency is almost entirely 
suppressed, as if the greater intensity of thought needed 
for metrical composition had consumed the wordy under- 
growth of rhetoric, and lifted him into a clearer region, 
where he saw the facts with unimpeded vision. On the 
other hand, it must be admitted that the rhythm is some- 
what monotonous and mechanical. The melody never 
wanders spontaneously into new and unexpected modula- 
tion, and seems rather the result of care and labour than a 
natural gift of music. Some lines are strangely harsh, as 

" So spun she, and so sang she," 

a concourse of sibilants which can hardly be spoken, and 
would have shocked a musical ear. 

But the Lays have, nevertheless, very considerable poeti- 
cal merit, on which it is the more necessary to dwell, as 
there appears to be disposition in some quarters to only 
grudgingly allow it, or even to deny it. The marked taste 



I V.J "HORATIUS." 109 

of intelligent children for Macanlay's poems is not to be 
undervalued. It shows, as Mr. Maurice said, that there was 
somethino- fresh, young, and unsophisticated in the mind 
of the writer. But Macaulay has no reason to fear a more 
critical tribunal. There is a directness of presentation in 
his best passages, the poetical result is so independent of 
any artifice of language or laboured pomp of diction, but, 
on the contrary, arises so naturally from mere accuracy of 
drawing and clear vision of the fact, that the question is 
not whether his work is good, but whether in its kind it has 
often been surpassed. Mr. Ruskin insists strongly on " the 
peculiar dignity possessed by all passages which limit their 
expression to the pure fact, and leave the hearer to gather 
what he can from it.'" This acknowledged sign of strength 
is very frequent in Macanlay's Lays. Few writers indulge 
less in the pathetic fallacy than he. Line after line con- 
tains nothing but the most simple statement of fact in 
quite unadorned language. For instance : 

"But with a crash like thunder 

Fell every loosened beam, 
And, like a dam, the mighty wreck 

Lay right athwart the stream ; 
And a long shout of triumph 

Rose from the walls of Rome, 
As. to the highest turret-tops 

Was splashed the yellow foam." 

Every statement here might be made with propriety by 
a simple man, as, e. </., a carpenter who had witnessed the 
event — the noise of the falling fabric, its position in tiie 
river, the exulting shout which naturally followed, the 
splash of yellow foam — no otiose epithet, as the Tiber was 
Ihe stream. Each line might form part of a bald report, 
' Modern Painters, vol. iii. c. 12. 



110 MACAULAY. [chap 

and yet the whole is graphic simply because it is literally 
true. The art, like all art, of course consists in seeing 
and seizing the right facts and giving them prominence. 
Macaulay's power of drawing, at once accurate and char- 
acteristic, gives to his descriptions at times a sharpness of 
outline which seems borrowed from sculpture : 

"■ Round turned he, as not deigning 

Those craven ranks to see ; 
Nought spake he to Lars Porsena ; 

To Sextus nought spake he. 
But he saw on Palatinus 

The white porch of his home, 
And he spake to the noble river 

That rolls by the towers of Rome: 

" ' Tiber ! Father Tiber ! 

To whom the Romans pray, 
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms. 

Take thou in charge this day !' 
So he spake, and speaking sheathed 

The good sword by his side, 
And with his harness on his back 

Plunged headlong in the tide.'''' 

Is there not a definite objectiveness of presentation here 
almost statuesque? 

Macaulay's calmness and self-restraint in verse are very 
marked as compared with the opposite qualities which he 
sometimes displays in prose. Occasionally he reaches a 
note of tragic solemnity without effort, and by the simplest 
means, as in the visions which haunted Sextus : 



"Lavinium and Laurentum 
Had on the left their post, 
With all the banners of the marsh, 
And banners of the coast. 



\ 



iv.l MACAULAY AND SCOTT. Ill 

Their leader was false Sextus 

That wrought the deed of shame; 
With restless pace and haggard face 

To his last field he came. 
Men said he saw strange visions 

Which none beside might see, 
And that strange sounds were in his ears 
. Which none might hear but he. 

A woman fair and stately, 

But pale as are the dead, 
Oft through the watches of the night 

Sat spinning by his bed ; 
And as she plied the distaff, 

In a sweet voice and low 
She sang of great old houses, 

And fights fought long ago. 
So spun she, and so sang she, 

Until the east was gray, 
Then pointed to her bleeding breast, 

And shrieked, and fled away." 

But his poetical merit, considerable as it was, is not the 
most important and interesting feature in the Lays of 
Ancient Rome. In literary classification Macaulay, of 
course, belongs to what is called the romantic school ; he 
could not do otherwise, living when he did. He was five 
years old when the Lay of the Last Minstrel was published, 
and he received in the impressionable period of youth the 
full impact of the Waverley novels. We have already 
seen how much they contributed to form his notions of 
history. It was not likely when he took to writing ballads 
that the influence of Scott would be less than when he 
wrote prose. Accordingly we meet with a reminiscence 
and echo of Scott all through the Lays. This was unavoid- 
able, and Macaulay seeks in no wise to disguise the fact. 
On the other hand, no one could resemble Scott less in his 



112 MACAULAY. [chap. 

deeper sympathies and cast of mind tlian Macanlay. Scott 
had the instinct of a wild animal for the open air, the for- 
est, the hill-side. He 

" Loved nature like a horned cow, 
Deer or bird or carribou," 

and thought that if he did not see the heather once a year 
he should die. Macaulay was a born citadin, and cared for 
nature hardly at all. His sister doubted whether any sce- 
nery ever pleased him so much as his own Holly Lodge, or 
Mr. Thornton's garden at Battersea Rise. Scott, again, was 
full of the romantic spirit. , His mind dwelt by preference 
on the past, which was lovely to him. Macaulay had an 
American belief and delight in modern material progress, 
and was satisfied that no age in the past was ever as good 
as the present. Scott's notions of politics were formed 
on the feudal pattern. He could understand and admire 
fealty, the devotion of vassal to lord, the personal attach- 
ment of clansman to his chief, but of the reasoned obedi- 
ence and loyalty of the citizen to the state, to the polity of 
which he forms a part, Scott seems as good as unconscious. 
It would not be easy to quote, from his poems at least, a 
passage which implied any sympathy with civil duty and 
sacrifice to the res publica, to the common weal. As Mr. 
Ruskin says, his sympathies are rather with outlaws and 
rebels, especially under the "greenwood tree," and he has 
but little objection to rebellion even to a king, provided it 
be on private and personal grounds, and not systematic 
or directed tO great public aims. This was the genuine 
feudal spirit, which ignored the state and the correlated 
notion of citizenship, and trusted for social cohesion to 
the- fragile tie of the liegeman's sworn fidelity to his suze- 
rain. Nothing stirred Scott's blood more than military 



IV.] MACAIJLAY AND SCOTT. 113 

prowess, the conflict of armed men, but he remains con- 
tented with the conflict ; he cares little in what cause men 
fight, so long as they do fight and accomplish "deeds of 
arms." It may be for love, or the point of honor, or 
because the chief commands it, or merely for the luxury 
of exchanging blows ; but for the patriotic valour which 
fights for Inearth and home, and native city, he has hardly 
a word to say. 

On opening Macaulay's Lays we find ourselves in a world 
which is the exact opposite of this ; — civic patriotism, zeal 
for the public weal, whether against foreign foe or domes- 
tic tyrant — these are his sources of inspiration. And there 
is thus a curious contrast, almost contradiction, between 
the outward form of the poems and their contents. The 
real romantic ballad and its modern imitations properly 
refer to times in which the notion of a state, composed 
of citizens who support it on reasoned grounds, has not 
emerged. The polls is not to be found in Homer, or in 
Chevy Chase, or in Scott. In Macaulay's ballads the State 
is everything. His love for ordered civil life, his zeal for 
the abstract idea of government instituted for the well- 
being of all who live under it, are as intense in him as they 
were in the breast of Pericles. Thus the key-note of the 
ballads is as remote as possible from that of Scott, and in- 
deed of all medisevalists, and not only remote, but very 
much nobler. The fighting in the Lays does not arise 
from mere reckless, light-hearted ferocity, 

" That mai'ked the foeman's feudal hate," 

but from lofty social union, which leads the brave to self- 
sacrifice for the common good. 

" For Romans in Rome's quarrel 
Spared neither land nor gold, 
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, 
In the brave days of old." 



114 MACAULAY. [chap. 

And this higher moral strain has its poetic reward. Ma- 
caulay attains a heroism of sentiment which Scott never 
reaches. Compare the almost effeminate sob over James 
killed at Flodden : 

" He saw the wreck his l-ashness wrought : 
Reckless of Ufe he desperate fought, 

And fell on Flodden plain. 
And well in death his trusty brand 
Firm clenched within his manly hand 

Beseemed the monarch slain ; 
But ! how changed since yon blithe night ! 
Gladly I turn me from the sight 

Unto my tale again," 

Compare this with the exultant and fiery joy over the 
death of Valerius : 

XVIII. 

" But fiercer grew the fighting 

Around Valerius dead ; 
For Titus dragged him by the foot 

And Aulus by the head. 
' On, Latines, on !' quoth Titus, 

' See how the rebels fly !' 
' Romans, stand firm,' quoth Aulus, 

' And win this fight or die. 
They must not give Valerius 

To raven and to kite ; 
For aye Valerius loathed the wrong. 

And aye upheld the right ; 
And for your wives and babies 

In the front rank he fell. 
Now play the men for the good house 

That loves the people well.' 

XIX. 

" Then tenfold round the body 
The roar of battle rose. 
Like the roar of a burning forest 
When a strong north wind blows.* 



iv.J "VIRGINIA." 115 

Now backward, and now forward, 

Rocked furiously the fray, 
Till none could see Valerius, 

And none wist where he lay. 
For shivered arms and ensigns 

Were heaped there in a mound, 
And corpses stiff, and dying men 
. That writhed and gnawed the ground ; 

And wounded horses kicking, 

And snorting purple foam : 
Right well did such a couch hejit 

A consular of Rome.'''' 

Macaulay had thoroughly assimilated the lofty civic 
spirit of the ancients — a spirit which was seriously in- 
jured when not wholly destroyed in the Middle Ages by 
Feudalism and Catholicism together. 

The lay of Virginia is of less even and sustained excel- 
lence than the two lays which precede it. The speech of 
Icilius and the description of the tumult which followed 
are admirable for spirit and vigour. It may be noticed 
generally that Macaulay is always very successful in his 
descriptions of excited crowds^he does it con amove — he 
had none of the disdain for the multitude which Carlyle 
manifests in and out of season. On this occasion the lib- 
eral politician combined with the artist to produce a pow- 
erful effect. He had a noble hatred of tyranny, and his 
sympathies were wholly with the many as against the few. 
There was a righteous fierceness in him at the sight of 
wrong, which is the stuff of which true patriots in troubled 
times are made. 

*' And thrice the tossing Forum set up a frightful yell : 
' See, see, thou dog! what tliou hast done, and hide thy shame in hell. 
Thou that wouldst make our maidens slaves must first make slaves 

of men. 
Tribunes ! hurrah for Tribunes ! Down with the wicked ten !' " 
6 



116 MACAULAY. [chap. 

This speech of Icilius is no closet rhetoric composed by 
a man who had never addressed a mob ; it is the speech 
of a practised orator who knows how to rouse passion and 
set men's hearts on fire. It is also a thoroughly dramatic 
speech ; good in itself, but made much better by the situa- 
tion of the supposed speaker. From a modern point of 
view it is better than the speech which Livy makes Icilius 
deliver, with its references to Roman law. On the other 
hand, the speech of Virginius to his daughter, just before 
he stabs her, is quite as bad as that of Icilius is good. It 
is a singular thing that Macaulay, whose sensibility and 
genuine tenderness of nature are quite beyond doubt, had 
almost no command of the pathetic. The explanation 
seems to be that he really was too sensitive. He says 
in his diary : " I generally avoid novels which are said to 
have much pathos. The suffering which they produce is 
to me a very real suffering, and of that I have quite enough 
without them." The fact, though highly creditable to his 
heart, shows a marked limitation of range, and excludes 
him from the class of artists by nature who are at once 
susceptible and masters of emotion. Feeling must have 
subsided into serene calm before it can be successfully 
embodied in art. In any case Macaulay seems to have 
been unusually incapable of, or averse to, the expression 
of tender and pathetic sentiment. He has in his corre- 
spondence and diaries more than once occasion to refer 
to the deaths of friends whom we know he loved, and he 
always does so in a curiously awkward manner, as if he 
were ashamed of his feelings, and wished to hide them 
even from himself. "Jeffrey is gone, dear fellow; I loved 
him as much as it is easy to love a man who belongs to 
an older generation. . . . After all, dear Jeffrey's death is 
hardly a matter for mourning." He had been on terras of 



IV.] ''THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS." 117 

affectionate intimacy with Jeffrey for more than twenty- 
five years. On hearing that Harry Hallam was dying at 
Sienna be says: "What a trial for my dear old friend!" 
(The historian.) " I feel for the lad himself too. Much 
distressed, I dined, however. We dine, unless the blow 
comes very, very near the heart indeed." There is evi- 
dently a deliberate avoidance of giving way to the ex- 
pression of grief. And yet when he comes across some 
of his sister Margaret's letters twenty-two years after her 
death, he is overcome, and bursts into tears. Macaulay 
could not hold the more passionate emotions sufficiently 
at arm's length to describe them properly when he felt 
them. And when they were passed his imagination did 
not reproduce the'm with a clearness available for art. A 
man on the point of stabbing his daughter to save her 
from dishonour would certainly not think of making the 
stagy declamation which Macaulay has put into the mouth 
of Virginius. The frigid conceits about " Capua's marble 
halls," and the kite gloating upon his prey, are the last 
things that would occur to a mind filled with such awful 
passions. Macaulay would have done better on this occa- 
sion to copy the impressive brevity of Livy, " Hoc te uno, 
quo possum modo, filia in libertatem vindico." If it be 
said that the object was not historical or even poetical 
verisimilitude, but to write an exciting ballad, such as 
might be supposed to stir the contemporaries of Licinius 
and Sextius, the answer will be given presently in reference 
to a parallel but much simpler case. 

The Prophecy of Capys is distinctly languid as a whole, 
though it has some fine stanzas, and contains one of the 
most delicate touches of colour that Macaulay ever laid on : 

" And Venus loves the whispers 
Of plighted youth and maid, 



118 MACAULAY. [chap. 

In Api'il's ivory moonlight, 

Beneath the chestnut's shade." 

The unclouded moon of Italy lighting up the limestone 
rocks produces just the nuance of green ivory. Generally 
his sense of colour is weak compared with Scott, whose 
eye for colour is such that while reading him we seem 
to be gazing on th^ purple glory of the hills when the 
heather is in bloom : Macaulay is gray and dun. It is 
curious to compare bow Macaulay and Scott deal with 
the same situation, that of a person anxiously watching 
for the appearance of another. Scott does it by putting 
the sense of sight on the alert : 

" The noble dame on turret high, 

Who waits her gallant knight, 
Looks to the western beam to spy 

The flash of armour bright; 
The village maid, with hand on brow 

The level ray to shade, 
Upon the foot-path watches now 

For Colin'' s darkening plaid.'''' 

Macaulay puts the sense of bearing on guard: 

" Since the first gleam of daylight 
Sempronius had not ceased 
To listen for the rushing 
Of horse-hoofs from the east." 

A keen sense of colour is the peculiar note, one might 
say the badge, of the romantic school, and this is true 
even of musicians (compare Handel, Bach, Haydn, with 
Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner). It is not without 
interest that we find Macaulay a sort of forced disciple of 
the romantic school, differing from it in this as well as 
in the other peculiarities above mentioned. 

The Prophecy of Capys suggests a sense of fatigue 



IV.] "THE PROPHECY OF OAPYS." 119 

and flaggino- inspiration in the "svriter which arc not with- 
out a certain significance, and ma}^ help to throw light on 
a question which has a certain interest for some persons. 
The question is, whether Macaulay should be considered 
a poet or not. " Some fastidious critics," says Mr. Tre- 
velyan, " think it proper to deny him that title." Now, 
if by this, is meant that he not only was no poet but 
wrote no poetry, the statement is obviously excessive and 
unfair. To have written poetry does not necessarily con- 
stitute a man a poet. We need to know, before according 
that title to a man, what relative proportion the poetic 
v(nn bore to the rest of his nature j how far poetry was 
his natural and spontaneous mode of utterance. It is 
evident that quaijtity as well as quality has to be con- 
sidered. Should we consider the writer of the best sonnet 
that ever was written a poet if he never had written 
anything else ? Was Single-speech Hamilton an orator ? 
When Johnson called Gray a " barren rascal," he implied 
in coarse language a truth of some importance, and passed 
a just criticism on Gray. Facile abundance is not neces- 
sarily a merit in itself, but it at least points to natural 
fertility of the soil, and its adaptation to the crop pro- 
duced. On the other hand, rare exotics painfully reared 
by artificial means, have not often more than a fancy 
value. Shelley writing the twelve books of the Revolt 
of Islam in a few months, Byron writing the first canto 
of Don Juan in a few weeks, showed by so doing that 
poetry was the spontaneous product of their minds, that 
the labour was small compared with the greatness of the 
result, and that, in short, the natural richness of the soil 
was the cause of their fertility. From this point of view 
it is manifest that Macaulay was no poet, though certainly 
he has written poetry. Directed by an immense knowl- 



120 MACAULAY. [chap. 

edge of literature and a cultivated taste — by watching 
for the movements of inspiration, by the careful storage 
of every raindrop that fell from the clouds of fancy, he 
collected a small vessel full of clear, limpid water, the spar- 
kling brightness of which it is unjust not to acknowledge. 
But the process was too slow and laborious to justify us 
in calling him a poet. What a different gale impelled 
him when he wrote prose ! He has only to shake out the 
sheet, and his sails become concave and turgid with the 
breeze. That is to say, prose was his vocation, poetry 
was not. But that is no reason why we should not ad- 
mire Horatius, as one of the best ballads in the language. 
As Lessing wrote dramas by dint of critical acumen, with- 
out, according to his own conviction, any natural dram- 
atic talent, so Macaulay wrote two or three graceful poems 
by the aid of great culture and trained literary taste. 

A question was left unanswered on a former page, and 
reference was made to a parallel case. The question was, 
whether such a lay as that of Virginia was in any degree 
more likely to represent an original lost lay written at the 
time of the Licinian Rogations than one written at the 
Decemvirate. One of Macaulay's best ballads after the 
I/a.T/s may help us to answer the question. T%e Battle 
of Ivry^ though not so careful and finished in language 
as the Lays^ is equal to any of them in fire. It is full 
also of what is called local colour and those picturesque 
touches which delight the admirers of the pseudo-antique. 
Now, it happens that we have a Huguenot lay on this 
very subject,, and it is interesting to compare the genuine 
article with the modern imitation. The romance and 
chivalry which Macaulay, following the taste of his time, 
has infused into his ballad are entirely wanting in the 
HLi2:uenot sono- which is very little more than a dull and 



IF. J HUGUENOT BALLAD. 121 

somewhat fierce hymn with a strong Old Testament 
flavour. In the modern poem the real local colour, the 
real sentiments with which a Huguenot regarded the 
defeat of the League, are omitted, and replaced by pict- 
uresque and graceful sentiments, against which the only, 
thing to be said is that they are entirely wanting in his- 
torical fi(|elity and truth. Even matters of fact are 
incorrectly given. No one would infer from Macaulay's 
ballad that Henry IV.'s army contained the flower of the 
French nobility, Catholic as well as Protestant; and as 
for the " lances " and " thousand spears in rest " with which 
he arms Henry's knights, it was one of the latter's mili- 
tary innovations to have suppressed and replaced them 
by sabres and pistols, far more eflScacious weapons at 
close quarters. But the romantic, chivalrous, and joyous 
tone is that which most contrasts with the gloomy, re- 
ligious spirit of the original. The song is supposed to 
be made in the name of Henry of Navarre, who gives all 
the glory to God. Two or three stanzas out of twenty 
will be suflBcient to quote : 

" Je chante ton honneur sous I'eifect de mes armes, 
A ta juste grandeur je rapporte le tout, 
Oar, du commencement du milieu jusqu'au bout, 
Toy seul m'as guaranty au plus fort des allarmes, 

"Du plus haut de ton Ciel regardant en la terre, 
Meprisant leur audace et des graves sourcis, 
Desdaignant ces mutins, soudain tu les as mis 
Au plus sanglant malheur que sceut porter la guerre. 

" Le jour cesse plustost que la chasse ne cesse ; 
Tout ce camp desole ne se pent asseurer, 
Et k peine la nuict les laisse respirer. 
Car les miens courageux les poursuyvoyent sans cesse."' 

' Le Chcmsawiiier Huguenot, dn xvi^ siecle, vol. ii. p. 315. 



122 MAC AULA Y. [ch>p. 

So we see that tlie chivalrous humanitarian sentiments 
which Macaulay has put in the mouth of his Huguenot 
bard are without foundation. 

" But out spake gentle Henry : ' No Frenchman is my foe ; 
Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go.' 
Oh ! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war, 
As our sovereign lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre ?' " 

" Beaucoup de fantassins frangais furent neanraoins sabres 
ou arquebuses dans la premiere fureur de la victoire ! la 
deroute fut au moins aussi sanglante que le combat." 
Now, the question mooted was as to the probability of 
these ballads having any historical fidelity or verisimili- 
tude. With regard to a ballad not three hundred years 
old, we find one of them has none. What is the proba- 
bility of those which pretend to go back a good deal over 
two thousand years being more accurate ? 

And this brings us to the consideration of the question 
whether we can honestly compliment and congratulate 
Macaulay on his Lays of Ancient Rome. The preceding 
remarks, it is hoped, show no tendency to morose hyper- 
criticism. But does it raise one's opinion of Macaulay's 
earnest sincerity of mind to find him devoting gome con- 
siderable time to the production of what he candidly ad- 
mitted to be but trifles, though " scholar-like and not in- 
elegant trifles ?" He could very well lay his finger on the 
defects of Bulvver's Last Days of Pompeii: "It labours," 
he says, " under the usual faults of all works in which it 
is attempted to give moderns a glimpse of ancient man- 
ners. After all, between us and them there is a great 
gulf which no learning will enable a man to clear." At 
the very time he made this entiy in his journal he was 
composing his lay ou Horatius, a much more difficult task 



IV.] THE LOVE OF TRUTH. 123 

than Bulwer's, for our knowledge of Roman manners un- 
der the empire may be said to be intimate and exact as 
compared with our knowledge of Roman manners in the 
semi-mythic period of the early republic. Was it a wor- 
thy occupation for a serious scholar to spend his time in 
producing mere fancy pictures, which could have no value 
beyond a cprtain prettiness, "in the prolongation from age 
to age of romantic . historical descriptions instead of sift- 
ed truth ?"^ Could we imagine Grote or Mommsen, or 
Ranke or Freeman engaged in such a way without a cer- 
tain sense of degradation? This is not making mu'ch of a 
small matter ; it is really important, reaching down, if you 
consider it well, to the deeper elements of character and 
primary motive. ^Macaulay's love and pursuit of truth, 
which he imagined to be dominant passions with him, 
were relatively feeble. The subject has already been re- 
ferred to. It is strange to see how much he deceived 
himself on this point. In the ambitious and wordy verses 
he composed on the evening of his defeat at Edinburgh 
he feigns that all the Fairies passed his cradle by without 
a blessing, except the Fairy Queen of Knowledge ; and 
she, the " mightiest and the best," pronounced : 

" Yes ; thou wilt love me with exceeding love." 

And the three illustrious predecessors whom in this par- 
ticular he wishes most to resemble, and who are alone 
mentioned, are the three oddly chosen names of Bacon, 
Hyde, and Milton, in all of whom we may confidently 
say that the love of truth was not the prominent and 
striking feature of their character and genius. Of Bacon, 
Macaulay himself has rather overstated, while he deplored, 
the weakness of his love of truth as compared to his love 

' Modern Painter s^ vol. iii. c. 5 
I 6* 



124 MAC AULA Y. [chap. 

of place and honours. What Hyde has to do in such com- 
pany more than other statesmen, ancient or modern, it is 
difficult to see. And in what way did Milton show a love 
of truth more than any other poet? Macaulay's notion 
. of the sentiment he claimed seems to have been abundant- 
ly vague. Kepler verifying his laws and going over the 
calculations one hundred and fifty times, in the mean while 
writing almanacks to keep him from starving; Newton 
working out his theory of gravitation for years, and mod- 
estly putting it aside, because the erroneous data on which 
he calculated led to incorrect results, then on corrected 
data, writing the Principia; nay, Franklin running an un- 
known risk of his life by identifying by means of his kite 
electricity with lightning ; and countless other loyal servants 
of science might have been cited with relevancy as types 
of lovers of truth. It is a misuse of language to confuse a 
general love of literature, or a very sensible zeal in getting 
up the materials for historical scene-painting, with the stern 
resolution which lays siege to nature's secrets, and will not 
desist till they are surrendered. But such pains are under- 
taken only at the bidding of a passionate desire for an an- 
swer by minds which can perceive the test-problems which 
have not yet capitulated, but which must be reduced before 
any further advance into the Unknown can be safely made. 
It is a peculiarity of Macaulay's mind that he rarely sees 
problems, that he is not stopped by difficulties out of 
which he anxiously seeks an issue; We never find him 
wondering with suspended judgment in what direction 
his course may lie. On the contrary, he has seldom any 
doubt or difficulty about anything — his mind is always 
made up, and he has a prompt answ^er for every question. 
We may without scruple say that the course of a genuine 
love of truth has never run so smooth. Here was the 



IV.] A PERIOD OF IRRESOLUTION. 125 

early history of Rome full of difficulties which clamoured 
for further research and elucidation. The subject had been 
just sufficiently worked to whet the curiosity and interest 
of an inquiring mind. There were not many men in Eu- 
rope more fitted by classical attainments to take the prob- 
lems suggested in hand, and advance them a stage nearer 
to a correct solution. Macaulay did not consider the mat- 
ter in this light at all. To have written a scholar -like essay 
on early Roman history would have been to write for a few 
score readers in the English and German universities. The 
love of truth which he imagined that he possessed would 
have directed him into that course. But if he had taken 
it his biographer would most certainly not have been able 
to inform us of anything so imposing as this: "Eighteen 
thousand of the Lays of Ancient Rome were sold in ten 
years, forty thousand in twenty years, and by June, 1875, 
upwards of a hundred thousand copies had passed into 
the hands of readers." 

Macaulay did not after leaving office avail himself of his 
leisure to resume his interrupted history with the zeal and 
promptitude that might have been expected. Besides 
the Lays, he allowed other and even less important things 
to waste his time. He was by no means so resolute in 
resisting the blandishments of society as he should have 
been, and as he afterwards became. *' I have had so much 
time occupied by politics and by the society which at 
this season fills London that I have written nothing for 
some weeks," he wTote to Macvey Napier. He would have 
shown more robustness of character and a more creditable 
absorption in his work, if he had courageously renounced 
for good and all both society and politics, now that he 
was for the first time in his life free to devote all his ener- 
gies to a great work. Instead of that, he loitered for fully 



126 MACAULAY. [chap. 

three years before he threw himself with passionate single- 
hearted concentration on his History. This shows that the 
book, after all, was not generated in the deeper and more 
earnest parts of his nature, but came mostly from the fancy 
and understanding. Or perhaps we should not be very 
wrong if we surmise that depth and earnestness were some- 
what wanting in him. He had no latent heat of sustained 
enthusiasm, either scientific, political, or artistic. By a 
vigorous spurt he could write a brilliant article, which 
rarely required more than a few weeks. His ambition, 
which, like all his passions, was moderate and amiable, was 
largely satisfied by the very considerable honours which 
he acquired by his contributions to the blue-and-yellow 
Review ; he had none of the fierce and relentless thirst for 
a great fame which drives some men into wrapt isolation, 
where they are free to nurse and indulge their moods of 
creative passion. Neither was he under the dominion of 
a great thought which hedges a man with solitude even 
in a crowd. On the other hand, it is only just to remem- 
ber that the pressure put upon him to leave his work was 
severe. Both in Parliament and the Edinburgh Review 
lie was able to render services which were not likely to 
be foregone, by those who needed them, without a hard 
struggle. For nearly twenty years the quarterly organ of 
the Whigs had enjoyed a new lease of popularity and 
power through his contributions. In the House of Com- 
mons the beaten and dejected Whigs were grateful beyond 
words for the welcome aid of his brilliant and destructive 
oratory. Mr. Napier appears to have been inconsiderately 
importunate for articles, and Macaulay, though protesting 
that he must really now devote himself to his History y 
with amiable weakness ends by giving in and writing. 
But the sacrifice was really toa great, and he ought to 



IT.] AT LENGTH RESOLUTE. 127 

have seen tliat it was. He did at last, and, resolutely pat- 
ting his foot down, declared that he would write no more 
for the Review till he had brought out two volumes of his 
book. He wrote to Napier: 

" I hope that you will make your arrangements for some three or 
four numbers without counting on me. I find it absolutely necessary 
to concentrate my attention on my historical work. You cannot 
conceive how difficult I find it to do two things at a time. Men are 
differently made. Southey used to work regularly two hours a day on 
the History of Brazil ; then an hour for the Quarterly Revieiv ; then 
an hour on the Life of Wesley ; then two hours on the Peninsular 
War ; then an hour on the Book of the Church. I cannot do so. I get 
into the stream of my narrative, and am going along as smoothly and 
quickly as possible. Then conaes the necessity of writing for th« 
Review. I lay my History aside ; and when after some weeks I re- 
sume it, I have the greatest difficulty in recovering the interrupted 
train of thought. But for the Review^ I should already have brought 
Old tivo volumes at least. I must really make a resolute effort, or my 
plan will end as our poor friend Mackintosh's ended." 

This self-reproach and this comparison with Mackintosh 
are constantly flowing from his- pen : 

" Another paper from me is at present out of the question. One 
in half a year is the utmost of which I can hold out any hopes. I 
ought to give my whole leisure to my History ; and fear that if I 
suffer myself to be diverted from that design, as I have done, I shall 
be like poor Mackintosh, leave behind me the character of a man 
who would have done something, if he had concentrated his powers 
instead of frittering them away. ... I must not go on dawdling and 
reproaching myself all my life." 

This sacrifice to editorial importunity was the more 
regrettable, as articles, written under this pressure, with 
one exception, have added little to Macaulay's fame. The 
fact is in no wise surprising. Task-work of this kind, even 
though undertaken at the bidding of friendship, is apt to 



128 MAOAULAY. [chap. 

betray a want both of maturity and spontaneous inspira- 
tion. Saving the article on Chatham — a subject which lay 
in the course of his studies, and with which he took great 
pains, writing it over three times — Macaulay's contribu- 
tions to the Edinburgh at this period have largely the char- 
acteristics of what are vulgarly called " pot-boilers,". though 
in his case they were written to keep, not his own, but an- 
other man's pot boiling. The articles on Madame D'Ar- 
blay's Memoirs and on Frederick the Great are thin, crude, 
perfunctory, and valueless, except as first-rate padding for 
a periodical review. In the latter he cannot even spell 
the name of the Principality of Frederick's favourite sister 
Wilhelmina correctly — always writing Bareuth instead of 
Baireuth ; it is but a small error, but it indicates haste, as 
he was usually careful in the orthography of proper names. 
But there are worse faults than this. When off his guard, 
especially when contemptuous or angry, Macaulay easily 
lapsed into an uncurbed vehemence of language which 
bordered on vulgarity : 

"Frederick by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege of 
kicking and cudgelling. His practice, however, as to that matter, 
differed in some important respects from his father's. To Frederick 
William the mere circumstance that any person whatever, men, wom- 
en, or children, Prussians or foreigners, were within reach of his toes 
or his cane, appeared to be a sufficient reason for proceeding to bela- 
bour them. Frederick required provocation, as well as vicinity." 

Again : " The resistance opposed to him by the tribu- 
nals inflamed him to fury. He reviled the Chancellor; 
he kicked the shins of his judges." Of Voltaire's skill in 
flattery he remarks: "And it was only from his hand that 
so much sugar could be swallowed without making the 
swallower sick." In the article on Madame D'Arblay her 
German colleague, Madame Schwellenberg, is described 



IV.] HIS SIMPLICITY. 129 

with a coarseness of tone worthy of the original : " a hate- 
ful old toad-eater, as illiterate as a chamber-maid, and proud 
as a whole German chapter." Madame Schwellenberg 
" raved like a maniac in the incurable ward of Bedlam." 
Madame Schwellenberg " raged like a wild-cat." 

Macaulay never fully appreciated the force of modera- 
tion, the impressiveness of calm under-statement, the pene- 
trating power of irony. His nature was essentially sim- 
ple and not complex ; when a strong feeling arose in his 
mind it came forth at once naked and unashamed ; it met 
with no opposition from other feelings capable of modify- 
ing or restraining it. A great deal of his clearness springs 
from this single, un involved character of his emotions, 
which never blend- in rich, polyphonic chords, filling the 
ear of the mind. Somewhat of this simplicity appears to 
have been reflected in his countenance. Carlyle, who was 
practically acquainted with a very different internal econo- 
my, once observed Macaulay's face in repose, as he was 
turning over the pages of a book. " I noticed," he said, 
" the homely Norse features that you find everywhere in 
the Western Isles, and I thought to myself, ' Well, any 
one can see that you are an honest, good sort of fellow, 
made out of oatmeal !' " He resembled the straight-split- 
ting pine rather than the gnarled oak. To liken a woman 
on account of her ill-temper to a raving maniac and a wild- 
cat excited in him no qualms ; the epithets expressed his 
feelings, but no counter wave of fastidious taste surged 
np, compelling a recast of the whole expression. 

Tt is some confirmation of a view already advanced in 
these pages that Macaulay's natural aptitude was rather 
oratorical than literary, that at this very time he was 
making some of his best speeches in Parliament. The 
fine literar}^ sense of nuance, the scrupulous choice of epi- 



130 MACAULAY. [chap. 

thet, the delicacy which it alarmed by loud tones and 
colours — in short, the qualities most rare and precious in 
a writer- — are out of place in oratory, which is never more 
(effective than when inspired by manly and massive emo- 
tion, enforcing broad and simple conclusions. It is im- 
possible to read Macaulay's speecl^^ without feeling that 
in deliverino; them he was wieldino; an instrument of 
which he was absolutely the master. The luminous order 
and logical sequence of the parts are only surpassed by 
the lofty unity and coherence of the whole. High, states-, 
man-like views are unfolded in language that is at once 
terse, chaste, and famiUar, never fine-drawn or over-subtle, 
but plain, direct, and forcible, exactly suited to an au- 
dience of practical men. Above all, the noble|and gen- 
erous sentiment, which burns and glows through every 
sentence, melts the whole mass of argument, illustration, 
and invective into a torrent of majestic oratory, which is 
as far above the eloquence of rhetoric as high poetry is 
above the mere rhetoric of verse. It is the more neces- 
sary to dwell on this point with some emphasis, as an un- 
just and wholly unfounded impression seems to be gain- 
ing ground that Macaulay was a mere closet orator, who 
delivered carefully prepared essays in the House of Com- 
mons, brilliant, perhaps, but unpractical rhetorical exer- 
cises that smelt strongly of the lamp. The truth is that 
Macaulay is never less rhetorical, in the bad sense of the 
word, than in . his speeches. He put on no gloves, he 
took in hand no buttoned foil, when on well-chosen oc- 
casions he came down to the House to make a speech. 
Blows straight from the shoulder; a short and sharp 
Roman sword, wielded with equal skill and vigour, are 
rather the images suggested by his performance in these 
conflicts. Yet a hundred persons know his essays for 



IV.] SPEECHES. 131 

one wlio is acquainted with his speeches. During the 
period comprised in this chapter — from 1841 to 1848 — 
he made twelve speeches ; and if the world's judgments 
were dictated by reason ,and insight instead of fashion 
and hearsay, no equal portion of Macaulay's works would 
be deemed so valuable^ It is no exaggeration to say that 
as an orator lie moves in a higher intellectual plane than 
he does as a writer. As a writer he rather avoids the 
discussion of principles, and is not always happy when he 
does engage in it. In his speeches we find him nearly 
without exception laying down broad, luminous principles, 
based upon reason, and those bouudless stores of histori- 
cal illustration, from which he argues with equal brevity 
and forcej It is Interesting to compare his treatment of 
tlie same subject in an essay and a speech. His speech 
on the Maynootli grant and his essay on Mr. Gladstone's 
Church and State deal with practically the same question, 
and few persons would hesitate to give the preference to 
the speech. 

It is difficult to give really representative extracts from 
Macaulay's speeches, for the reason that they are so or- 
ganically constructed that the proverbial inadequacy of 
the brick to represent the building applies to them in an 
unusual degree. Many of the speeches also refer to top- 
ics and party politics which are rapidly passing into ob- 
livion. One subject, to our sorrow, retains a perennial in- 
terest : Macaulay's speeches on Ireland would alone suf- 
fice to place him in the rank of high, far-seeing statesmen. 
The lapse of well-nigh forty years has not aged this mel- 
ancholy retrospect. He is speaking of Pitt's intended 
legislation at the time of the Union : 

" Unhappily, of all his projects for the benefit of Ireland, the 
Union alone was carried into eifect ; and, therefore, that Union was 



132 MACAULAY. [chap. 

a Union only in name. The Irish found that they had parted with at 
least the name and show of independence ; and that for this sacrifice 
of national pride they were to receive no compensation. The Union, 
which ought to have been associated in their minds with freedom and 
justice, was associated only with disappointed hopes and forfeited 
pledges. Yet it was not even then too late. It was not too late in 
1813. It was not too late in 1821. It w^is not too late in 1825. 
Yes, if even in 1825 some men who were then, as they are now, high 
in the service of the Crown could have made up their minds to do 
w^hat they were forced to do four years later, that great work of rec- 
onciliation which Mr. Pitt had meditated might have been accom- 
plished. The machinery of agitation was not yet fully organized. 
The Government was under no strong pressure; and therefore con- 
cession might still have been received with thankfulness. That op- 
portunity was suffered to escape, and it never returned. 

''In 1829, at length, concessions were made, were made largely, 
were made without the conditions which Mr. Pitt would undoubtedly 
have demanded, and to which, if demanded by Mr. Pitt, the whole 
body of Roman Catholics would have eagerly assented. But those 
concessions were made reluctantly, made ungraciously, made under 
duress, made from mere dread of civil war. How, then, was it pos- 
sible that they should produce contentment and repose? What 
could be the effect of that sudden and profuse liberality following 
that long and obstinate resistance to the most reasonable demands, 
except to teach the Irishman that he could obtain redress only by 
turbulence ? Could he forget that he had been, during eight-and- 
twenty years, supplicating Parliament for justice, urging those unan- 
swerable arguments which prove that the rights of conscience ought 
to be held sacred, claiming the, performance of promises made by min- 
isters and princes, and that he had supplicated, argued, claimed the 
performance of promises in vain ? Could he forget that two gen- 
erations of the most profound thinkers, the most brilliant wits, the 
most eloquent orators, had written and spoken for him in vain ? 
Could he forget that the greatest statesmen who took his part had 
paid dear for their generosity ? Mr. Pitt had endeavored to redeem 
his pledge, and he was driven from office. Lord Grey and Lord Gren- 
ville endeavored to do but a small part of what Mr. Pitt thought 
right and expedient, and they were driven from office. Mr. Canning 
took the same side, and his reward was to be worried to death by 



iv.'j ATTACK ON PEEL. 183 

the party of which he was the brightest ornament. At length, wlien 
he was gone, the Roman Catholics began to look, not to the cabinets 
and parliaments, but to themselves. They displayed a formidable 
array of physical force, and yet kept within, just within, the limits of 
the law. The consequence was that, in two years, more than any 
prudent friend had ventured to demand for them was granted to 
them by their enemies. Yes ; within two years after Mr. Canning 
had been lafd in the transept near us, all that he would have done — 
and more than he could have done — was done by his persecutors. 
How was it possible that the whole Roman Catholic population of 
Ireland should not take up the notion that, from England, or at least 
from the party which then governed and which now governs Eng- 
land, nothing is to be got by reason, by entreaty, by patient endur- 
ance, but everything by intimidation ? That tardy repentance de- 
served no gratitude, and obtained none. The whole machinery of 
agitation was complete, and in perfect order. The leaders had tasted 
the pleasures of popularity; the multitude had tasted the pleasures 
of excitement. Both the demagogue and his audience felt a craving 
for the daily stimulant. Grievances enough remained, God knows, 
to serve as pretexts for agitation ; and the whole conduct of the Gov- 
ernment had led the sufferers to believe that by agitation alone could 
any grievance be removed."^ 

As a specimen of Macaulay's power of invective, his 
attack on Sir Robert Peel may be quoted. After Peel's 
death, when revising his speeches for publication, he re- 
called in his diary the impression he had made. " How 
white poor Peel looked while I was speaking! I remem- 
ber the effect of the words, ' There you sit,' etc." 

" There is too much ground for the reproaches of those who, hav- 
ing, in spite of a bitter experience, a second time trusted the Right 
Honourable Baronet, now find themselves a second time deluded. It 
has been too much his practice, when in Opposition, to make use of 
passions with which he has not the slightest sympathy, and of preju- 
dices which he regards with a profound contempt. As soon as he is 

' On the State of Ireland, February, 1844. 



134 MACAtJLAY. [chap. 

in power a change takes place. The instruments which have done 
his work are flung aside. The ladder by which he has climbed is 
kicked down. . . . Can we wonder that the eager, honest, hot-headed 
Protestants, who raised you to power in the confident hope that you 
would curtail the privileges of the Koman Catholics, should stare 
and grumble when you propose to give public money to the Roman 
Catholics ? Can we wonder that the people out-of-doors should be 
exasperated by seeing the very men who, when we were in office, 
voted against the old grant of Maynooth, now pushed and pulled into 
the House by your whippers-in to vote for an increased grant ? The 
natural consequences follow. All those fierce spirits whom you hal- 
looed on to harass us now turn round and begin to worry you. " The 
Orangeman raises his war-whoop ; Exeter Hall sets up its bray ; Mr. 
Macneill shudders to see more costly cheer than ever provided for 
the Priest of Baal at the table of the Queen ; and the Protestant 
operatives of Dublin call for impeachments in exceedingly bad Eng- 
lish. But what did you expect ? Did you think when, to serve your 
turn, you called the devil up that it was as easy to lay him as to 
raise him ? Did you think when you went on, session after session, 
thwarting and reviling those whom you knew to be in the right, and 
flattering all the worst passions of those whom you knew to be in the 
wrong, that the day of reckoning would never come ? It has come. 
There you sit, doing penance for the disingenuousness of years. If 
it be not so, stand up manfully and clear your fame before the House 
and country. Show us that some steady policy has guided your con- 
duct with respect to Irish affairs. Show us how, if you are honest 
in 1845, you can have been honest in 1841. Explain to us why, af- 
ter having goaded Ireland to madness for the purpose of ingratiating 
yourselves with the English, you are now setting England on fire for 
the purpose of ingratiating yourselves with the Irish. Give us some 
reason which shall prove that the policy you- are following, as Minis- 
ters, is entitled to support, and which shall not equally prove you to 
have been the most factious and unprincipled Opposition that ever 
this country saw."^ 

But the time was approaching when these brilliant pas- 
sages of arms needed to be brought to a close. Through 

' Speech on Maynooth, April, 1845. 



IV.] THE "HISTORY." 135 

manifold impediments and lunderances, Macaulay had 
slowly proceeded with his History of England ; and he 
felt what most workers have experienced, that the attrac- 
tive power of his work increased with its o-rowth. In 1844 
he gave up writing for the Edinburgh Review^ a wise, 
though somewhat late, resolution, which he would have 
done well" to make earlier. In 1847 he lost his seat for 
Edinburgh, and thus was severed the last tie which con- 
nected him with active politics. He then settled down 
with steady purpose to finish his task; and on November 
29, 1848, the work was given to the world. Not since 
the publication of the first volume of the Decline and 
Fall, nearly three-quarters of a century before, has any 
historical work been received with such universal accla- 
mation. The first edition of three thousand copies was 
exhausted in ten days ; and in less than four months thir- 
teen thousand copies were sold. The way in which Ma- 
caulay was affected by this overwhelming success showed 
that he was wholly free from any taint of pride or arro- 
gance. " I am half afraid," lie wrote in his journal, " of 
this strange prosperity. ... I feel extremely anxious about 
the second part. Can it possibly come up to the first ?" 

We have now to consider the work in which, for many 
years, he had ''garnered up" his hearty 



CHAPTER V. 



" History," says Macaulay, at the commencement of the 
Essay on Hallam, " at least in its state of ideal perfection, 
is a compound of poetry and philosophy. It impresses 
general truths on the mind, by a vivid representation of 
particular characters and incidents. But in fact the two 
hostile elements of which it consists have never been 
known to form a perfect amalgamation; and at length, in 
our own time, they have been completely and professedly 
separated. Good histories, in the proper sense of the word, 
we have not. But we have good historical romances and 
good historical essays." 

The reconciliation of these two hostile elements of his- 
tory was the dream of Macaulay's early ambition and the 
serious occupation of his later years. It will be worth 
while to briefly consider the problem itself before we con- 
template the success and skill which he brought to bear 
on its solution. 

The two sides or the two elements of history — the ele- 
ment of fact, and the element of art, which fashions the 
fact into an attractive form — have always been too obvious 
to be overlooked. In the earliest form of history — poetry 
and legend — the element of fact is reduced to a minimum, 
and almost completely overpowered by the element of art, 



CHAP, v.] THE "HISTORY." 137 

-which moulds fact without restraint. The growth of 
civic life partly redresses the balance : the need of accu- 
rate record of facts is felt, and first bald annals, and then 
history in the common sense of the word, make their 
appearance. The relative proportion of the two ingre- 
dients was never carefully determined, but left to the 
taste and genius of individual writers. On the whole, 
however, the artistic element long maintained the upper 
hand. The search for facts, even when acknowledged as 
a duty, was perfunctory, and the main object of historians 
was to display their talent in drawing pictures of the 
past, in which imagination had a larger share than real- 
ity. The masters of this artistic form of history are the 
four great ancients, two Greek and two Roman — Herodo- 
tus, Thucydides, Livy, and Tacitus — who have never been, 
and are in -little danger of being, surpassed. The mod- 
erns for a long time only copied the ancients in history, 
as in all other departments. Considering his opportuni- 
ties and easy access to original authorities, Hume is hardly 
a more careful inquirer than Livy : an attractive narrative 
in a pure style was the main object of both. 

But towards the end of the last century history received 
a new impulse. The complicated structure of society be- 
gan to be dimly surmised ; political economy introduced 
a greater precision into the study of certain social ques- 
tions ; and the enlarged view thus gained of the present 
was soon extended to the past. The French Revolution, 
revealing as it did the unsuspected depth of social strati- 
fication, accelerated a movement already begun. In the 
early part of the present century history was studied with 
new eyes. It was seen that it must all be written over 
again — that the older writers had seen little more than the 
surface, and were only surveyors, whereas geologists were 



138 MACAULAY. [chap 

wanted who could penetrate to greater depths. In short, 
the past began to be scientifically examined, not for ar- 
tistic purposes, in order to compose graceful narratives — 
not for political purposes, in order to find materials for 
party warfare — not for theoretical purposes, in order to 
construct specious but ephemeral philosophies of history ; 
but simply for accurate and verifiable knowledge. It was 
a repetition of the process through which previous sciences 
had passed from the pursuit of chimerical to real and valid 
aims — the study of the heavens from astrology to astron- 
omy, the study of the constituents of bodies from alchem- 
istry to chemistry, the study of medicine from the search 
for the elixi?' vitce to serious therapeutics. The result was 
to depress, and almost degrade, the artistic element in his- 
tory. When the magnitude and severity of the task before 
men was at last fully perceived — when it was seen that we 
have to study the historical record as we study the geolog- 
ical record — that while both are imperfect, full of gaps 
which may never be filled up, yet enough remains to merit 
and demand the most thorough examination, classification, 
and orderly statement of the phenomena we have — it was 
felt there was something trivial and unworthy of the grav- 
ity of science to think of tricking out in the flowers of 
rhetoric the hardly- won acquisitions of laborious research. 
Poetical science and scientific poetry are equally repellent 
to the genuine lovers of both. Simple, unornate statement 
of the results obtained is the only style of treatment con- 
sonant with the dignity of genuine inquiry. 

Macaulay passed his youth and early manhood, during 
the period when this great change was taking place, in 
historical studies, and producing its first fruits. But it 
did not find favour in his eyes. Very much the contra- 
ry : it filled him with something like disgust. Instead of 



v.] THE "HISTORY." 139 

yielding to the new movement, he resolved to ignore it, 
and even by his practice to oppose it. Though the two 
elements of history had never yet been amalgamated with 
success, and were about, perhaps, to be severed forever, he 
thought he could unite them as they had never been united 
before. lie took, as we have seen (chap, ii.), no notice of 
the new Jiistory, showed no curiosity in what was being 
done in that direction, and nursing his own thoughts in 
almost complete isolation amid contemporary historians, 
conceived and matured his own plan of how history should 
be written. He has left us in no doubt as to what that 
plan was. It was that history should be a true novel, ca- 
pable of " interesting the affections, and presenting pictures 
to the imagination. ... It should invest with the reality 
of human flesh and blood beings whom we are too much 
inclined to consider as personified qualities in an allegory ; 
call up our ancestors before us with all their peculiarities 
of language, manners, and garb ; show us over their houses, 
seat us at their tables, rummage their old-fashioned ward- 
robes, explain the uses of their ponderous furniture." And 
that this plan, made in youth, was carried out in after-life 
with rare success and felicity, his History is here to show. 
Thus, just at the time when history was taking a more 
scientific and impersonal character, Macaulay was preparing 
to make it more concrete and individual, to invest it with 
more flesh and blood, and make it more capable of stirring 
the affections. He was not a progressist, or even a con- 
servative, but a reactionary in his notions of history. But 
originality may be shown (sometimes is more shown) in 
going back as well as in going forward. Those are by no 
means the strongest minds which most readily yield to the 
prevailing fashion of their age. Macaulay showed a lofty 
self-confidence and sense of power when he resolved to at' 



140 MACAULAY. [chap. 

tempt a task which he owned had never been accomplished 
before — nay, to confer on artistic history a rank and dig- 
nity which it never had previously enjoyed, at a time when 
a formidable rival was threatening to depress, or even to 
depose it altogether. 

His plan led, or rather forced him, to work on a scale 
of unprecedented magnitude, which, even in spite of his 
example, has never been quite equalled. To produce the 
effects he required, extreme minuteness of detail was in- 
dispensable; characters must be painted life-size, events 
related with extraordinary fulness, and the history of a 
nation treated in a style proper to memoirs, or even to 
romances. The human interest had to be sustained by 
biographical anecdotes, and a vigilant liveliness of narra- 
tive which simulated the novel of adventure. The politi- 
cal interest was to be kept up by similar handling of party 
debates, party struggles, by one who knew by experience 
every inch of the ground. But the true historical and 
sociological interest necessarily retreated into a secondary 
rank. An ordnance map cannot serve the purpose of a 
hand atlas. On the scale of an inch to a mile we may 
trace the roads and boundaries of our parish ; but we can- 
not combine with such minuteness a synthetic view of the 
whole island and its relation to European geography. It 
was on the scale of an ordnance map that Macaulay WTote 
his History of England. Such a plan necessarily excluded 
as much on the one hand as it admitted on the other. Our 
view of the past is vitiated and wrong, unless a certain pro- 
portion presides over our conception of it. The most val- 
uable quality of history is to show the process of social 
growth ; and the longer the period over which this process 
is observed, the more instructive is the result. A vivid 
perception of a short period, with imperfect grasp of what 



v.j THE "HISTORY." 141 

preceded and followed it, is rather misleading than instruc- 
tive. It leads to a confusion of the relative importance of 
the part as compared to the whole. 

It is, perhaps, a low - minded objection to Macaulay's 
conception of history, to remark that its application to 
lengthy periods is a physical impossibility. The five vol- 
umes we .have of his History comprise a space of some 
fifteen years. It was his original scheme to bring his 
narrative down to the end of the reign of George IV., in 
round numbers a period of a century and a half. If, 
therefore, his plan had been carried out on its present 
scale, it would have needed fifty volumes, if not more, as 
it is highly improbable that more recent events would 
have permitted greater compression. But further, he 
wrote, at an average, a volume in three years ; therefore 
his whole task would have taken him one hundred and 
fifty years to accomplish — that is to say, it would have 
taken as long to record the events as the events took 
to happen. This is almost a practical refutation of the 
method he adopted. And yet such an absurd result could 
not, on his principles, be avoided. If history is to be 
written in such minute detail that it shall rival the novel 
in unbroken sustention of the personal interest attaching 
to the characters, unexampled bulk must ensue. Macau- 
lay had no intention of being so prolix. He expected to 
achieve the first portion of his plan (down to the com- 
mencement of Walpole's administration), a matter of thir- 
ty-five years, in five volumes ; and, as it turned out, five 
volumes only carried him over fifteen years. But he could 
not afford to reduce his scale without sacrificing his con- 
ception of how history should be written. 

What was the new and original element in Macaulay's 
treatment of history ? The unanimous verdict of his con- 



142 MACAULAY. [chap. 

temporaries was to the effect that he had treated history 
in a novel way. He was himself satisfied that he had im- 
proved on his predecessors. " There is merit, no doubt," 
he says, in his diary, " in Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and 
Gibbon. Yet it is not the thing. I have a conception of 
history more just, I am confident, than theirs." Self-con- 
ceit was no vice of Macaulay's ; and as on this point of 
his originality he persuaded all the reading world of his 
time to adopt his opinion, our business is to find out in 
what his originality consisted. What it amounts to, or 
may be intrinsically worth, will be considered afterwards. 

If we take to pieces one of his massive chapters with a 
view to examine his method, we shall find that his self- 
confidence was not without foundation. Historical narra- 
tive in his hands is something vastly more complex and 
irfvolved than it ever was before. Indeed, " narrative " is 
a weak and improper word to express the highly organized 
structure of his composition. Beneath the smooth and 
polished surface layer under layer may be seen of subordi- 
nate narratives, crossing and interlacing each other like the 
parts in the score of an oratorio. And this complexity 
results not in confusion, but in the most admirable clear- 
ness and unity of effect. His pages are not only pictorial, 
they are dramatic. Scene is made to follow scene with 
the skill of an accomplished playwright; and each has been 
planned and fashioned with a view to its thoughtfully pre- 
pared place in the whole piece. The interest of the story 
as a story is kept up with a profound and unsuspected art. 
The thread of the narrative is never dropped. When tran- 
sitions occur — and no writer passes from one part of his 
subject to another with more boldness and freedom — they 
are managed with such skill and ease that the reader is 
unaware of them. A turn of the road has brought us in 



v.] THE "HISTORY." 143 

view of a new prospect; but we are not conscious for a 
moment of having left the road. The change seems the 
most natural thing in the world. Let the more remarka- 
ble chapters be examined from this point of view — say, 
simply for example, the Ninth, the Fifteenth, and the 
Twentieth — and then let the most adverse critic be asked 
to name an instance in which the art of historical compo- 
sition has been carried to a higher perfection. 

In short, Macaulay was a master of the great art of mise 
en scene such as we never had before. It is rather a French 
than an English quality, and has been duly appreciated in 
France. Michelet praises Macaulay in warm terms, speaks 
of him as " illustre et regrette^'' and of his " tres beau 
recit.'''' If he must be considered as an historical artist 
who, on the whole, has no equal, the fact is not entirely 
owing to the superiority of his genius, unmistakable as 
that was. No historian before him ever regarded his task 
from the same point of view, or aimed with such calm pa- 
tience and labour at the same result ; no one, in short, had 
ever so resolved to treat real events on the lines of the 
novel or romance. Many writers before Macaulay had 
done their best to be graphic and picturesque, but none 
ever saw that the scattered fragments of truth could, by 
incessant toil directed by an artistic eye, be worked into a 
mosaic, which for colour, freedom, and finish, might rival the 
creations of fancy. The poets who have written history — 
*Voltaire, Southey, Schiller, Laraartine — are not comparable 
to Macaulay as historical artists. They did not see that facts 
recorded in old books, if collected and sorted with unwea- 
ried pains, might be made to produce effects nearly as strik- 
ing and brilliant as the facts they invented for the works 
of their imagination. Macaulay saw that the repertory of 
truth was hardly less extensive than the repertory of fie- 



144 MACAULAY. [chap. 

tion. If the biography of every character is known with 
the utmost detail, it will be possible, when each presents 
himself in the narrative, to introduce him with a fulness 
of portraiture such as the novelist applies to the hero and 
heroine of his romance. Exhaustive knowledge of the 
preceding history of every place named, enables the writer 
to sketch the castle, the town, or the manor-house with 
opportune minuteness and local colour. Above all, a nar- 
rative built on so large a scale that it allows absolutely un- 
limited copiousness of facts and illustration, can be order- 
ed with that regard to the interest of the story as a story 
that the universal curiosity in human adventure is awakened 
which produces the constant demand for works of fiction. 
Macaulay saw this, and carried out his conception with a 
genius and patient diligence which, when our attention is 
fully called to the point, fill the mind with something like 
amazement. It is probable that no historian ever devoted 
such care to the grouping of his materials. He replanned 
and rewrote whole chapters with ungrudging toil. " I 
worked hard," he says in his diary, " at altering the ar- 
rangement of the first three chapters of the third volume. 
What labour it is to make a tolerable book;- and how 
little readers know how much trouble the ordering of parts 
has cost the writer." Again : " This is a tough chapter. 
To make the narrative flow along as it ought, each part 
naturally springing from that which" precedes, is not easy. 
What trouble these few pages have cost me. The great 
object is that they may read as if they had been spoken 
off, and seem to flow as easily as table-talk." Any one 
who knows by experience how difficult if is to conduct a 
wide, complex narrative with perspicuity and ease, and then 
observes the success with which Macaulay has conquered 
the difficulty, will be apt to fall into a mute admiration 



v.] THE "HISTORY/' 146 

almost too deej) for praise. In the " ordering of [)arts," 
which cost him so much labour, his equal will not easily 
be found. Each side of the story is brought forward in 
its proper time and place, and leaves the stage when it has 
served its purpose, that of advancing by one step the main 
action. Each of these subordinate stories, marked by ex= 
quisite finish, leads up to a minor crisis or turn in events, 
where it joins the chief narrative with a certain eclat and 
surprise. The interweaving of these well-nigh endless 
threads, the clearness with which each is kept visible and 
distinct, and yet is made to contribute its peculiar effect 
and colour to the whole texture, constitute one of the 
great feats in literature. 

Imperfectly as a notion of such constant and pervading 
merit can be conve3'ed by an extract, one is offered here 
merely as an example. But a passage from Hume, dealing 
with the same events, will be giveil first. An interesting 
comparison — or, rather, contrast — between the styles of the 
earlier and later writer will be found to result. The sub- 
ject is the flight of the Princess Anne at the crisis of her 
father's fortunes. Hume says : 

" But Churchill had prepared a still more mortal blow for his dis- 
tressed benefactor. His lady and he had an entire ascendant over 
the family of Prince George of Danemark ; and the time now appear- 
ed seasonable for overwhelming the unhappy King, who was already 
staggering with the violent shocks which he had received. Andover 
was the first stage of James's retreat towards London, and there Prince 
George, together with the young Duke of Ormond, Sir George Huet, 
and some other persons of distinction, deserted him in the night-time, 
and retired to the Prince's camp. No sooner had this news reached 
London than the Princess Anne, pretending fear of the King's dis- 
pleasure, withdrew herself in company with the Bishop of London 
and Lady Churchill. She fled to Nottingham, where the Earl of 
Dorset received her with great respect, and the gentry of the country 
quickly formed a troop for her protection." 



.146 MACAULAY. [chap. 

This is Macaulay's account : 

" Prince George and Ormond were invited to sup with the King at 
Andover. The meal must have been a sad one. The King was over- 
whelmed by his misfortunes. His son-in-law was the dullest of com- 
panions. ' I have tried Prince George sober,' said Charles the Second, 
' and I have tried him drunk ; and drunk or sober, there is nothing 
in him.' Ormond, who was through life taciturn and bashful, was 
not likely to be in high spirits at such a moment. At length the re- 
past terminated. The King retired to rest. Horses were in waiting 
for the Prince and Ormond, who, as soon as they left the table, mount- 
ed and rode off. They were accompanied by the Earl of Drumlanrig, 
eldest son of the Duke of Queensberry. The defection of this young 
nobleman was no insignificant event ; for Queensberry was the head 
of the Protestant Episcopalians of Scotland, a class compared with 
whom the bitterest English Tories might be called Whiggish ; and 
Drumlanrig himself was lieutenant-colonel of Dundee's regiment of 
horse, a band more detested by the Whigs than even Kirke's lambs. 
This fresh calamity was announced to the King on the following 
morning. He was less disturbed by the news than might have been 
expected. The shock which he had undergone twenty-four hours 
before had prepared him for almost any disaster ; and it was impos- 
sible to be seriously angry with Prince George, who was hardly an 
accountable being, for having yielded to the arts of such a tempter 
as Churchill. ' What !' said James, ' is Est-il-possible gone too ? After 
all, a good trooper would have been a greater loss. ' In truth, the King's 
whole anger seems at this time to have been concentrated, and not 
without cause, on one object. He set off for London, breathing ven- 
geance against Churchill, and learned on arriving a new crime of the 
arch-deceiver. The Princess Anne had been some hours missing." 

Observe the art with which the flight of the princess 
has been kept back till it can be revealed with startling 
effect. The humorous story continues : 

"Anne, who had no will but that of the Churchills, had been in- 
duced by them to notify under her own hand to William, a week be- 
fore, her approbation of his enterprise. She assured him that she 
was entirely in the hands of her friends, and that she would remain 



v.] THE "HISTORY." 147 

in tha palace or take refuge in the city as they might determine. On 
Sunday, 25th November, she and those who thought for her were un- 
der the necessity of coming to a sudden resohition. That afternoon 
a courier from Salisbury brought tidings that Churchill had disap- 
peared, and that he had been accompanied by Grafton, that Kirke 
had proved false, and that the royal forces were in full retreat. 
There was, as usually happened when great news, good or bad, ar- 
rived in toVn, an immense crowd that evening in the gallery of 
Whitehall. Curiosity and anxiety sate on every face. The Queen 
broke forth into natural expressions of indignation against the chief 
traitor, and did not altogether spare his too partial mistress. The 
sentinels were doubled round that part of the palace which Anne 
occupied. The princess was in dismay. In a few hours her father 
would be at Westminster. It was not likely that he would treat her 
personally with severity ; but that he would permit her any longer to 
enjoy the society of her friend was not to be hoped. It could hardly 
be doubted that Sarah would be placed under arrest, and would be 
subjected to a strict examination by shrewd and rigorous inquisitors. 
Her papers would be seized ; perhaps evidence aifecting her life would 
be discovered ; if so, the worst might well be dreaded. The vengeance 
of the implacable King knew no distinction of sex. For offences much 
smaller than those which might be brought home to Lady Churchill 
he had sent women to the scaffold and the stake. Strong affection 
braced the feeble mind of the princess. There was no tie which she 
would not break, no risk which she would not run, for the object of 
her idolatrous affection. ' I will jump out of the window,' she cried, 
' rather than be found here by my father.' The favourite undertook 
to manage an escape. She communicated in all haste with some of 
the chiefs of the conspiracy. In a few hours everything was arranged. 
That evening Anne retired to her chamber as usual. At dead of night 
she rose, and accompanied by her friend Sarah and two other female 
attendants, stole down the back stairs in a dressing-gown and slippers. 
The fugitive gained the open street unchallenged. A hackney-coach 
was in waiting for them there. Two men guarded the humble vehi- 
cle ; one of them was Compton, Bishop of London, the princess's old 
tutor ; the other was the magnificent and accompUshed Dorset, whom 
the extremity of the public danger had aroused from his luxurious 
repose. The coach drove to Aldersgate Street, where the town resi- 
dence of the bishops of London then stood, within the shadow of their 

7* 



148 MACAULAY. [chap. 

cathedral. There the princess passed the night. On the following 
morning she set out for Epping Forest. In that wild tract Dorset 
possessed a venerable mansion, which has long since been destroyed. 
In his hospitable dwelling, the favourite resort of wits and poets, the 
fugitives made a short stay. They could not safely attempt to reach 
William's quarters, for the road thither lay through a country occu- 
pied by the royal forces. It was therefore determined that Anne 
should take refuge with the northern insurgents. Compton wholly 
laid aside for the time his sacerdotal character. Danger and conflict 
had rekindled in him all the military ardour which he had felt twenty- 
eight years before, when he rode in the Life Guards. He preceded 
the princess's carriage in a buff coat and jackboots, with a sword at 
his side, and pistols in his holsters. Long before she reached Not- 
tingham she was surrounded by a body-guard of gentlemen who 
volunteered to escort her. They invited the bishop to act as their 
colonel, and he assented with an alacrity which gave great scandal 
to rigid Churchmen, and did not much raise his character even in 
the opinion of Whigs." 

Reserving the question whether history gains or loses 
by being written in this way — a most important reserva- 
tion — it must be allowed that of its kind this is nearly as 
good as it can be. The sprightly vivacity of the scene is 
worthy of any novel, yet it is all a mosaic of actual fact. 
We may call it Richardson grafted on Hume. 

Passages like these, as every reader knows, are incessant 
in Macaulay's History, and have been the foundation of a 
common charge of "excess of ornament." In this there 
seems to be some misconception, or even confusion of 
mind, on the part of those who bring the accusation. It 
is obviously open to us to object to this mode of treating 
history altogether. We may say that to recount the his- 
tory of a great state in a sensational styJe befitting the 
novel of adventure is a mistaken proceeding. But this 
objection eliminates Macaulay's History from the pale of 
toleration. According to his scheme such passages are 



v.] THE "HISTORY." 149 

not mere ornament, but part and parcel of the whole 
structiM'e ; to remove them would not be to remove mere 
excrescences, but a large portion of the substance as well. 
We must make our choice between two styles of history 
— the one in which the interest centres round human 
characters, and the other in which it centres round the 
growth and play of social forces. Perhaps the two may 
very well exist side by side — perhaps not ; but in any case 
we cannot with fairness employ the principles of the one 
to criticise the methods of the other. Macaulay wittingly, 
and after mature thought, adopted the style we know, and 
carried it out with a sumptuous pomp that has never been 
surpassed. His ornament, it will be generally found, is no 
idle embellishment, stuck on with vulgar profusion in obe- 
dience to a faulty taste, but structurally useful parts of the 
building, supporting, according to size and position, a due 
share of the weight ; or, in other words, mere additional 
facts for which he is able to find a fitting place. Take, for 
instance, this little vignette of Monmouth and the Princess 
of Orange : 

" The duke had been encouraged to hope that in a very short time 
he would be recalled to his native land and restored to all his high 
honours and commands. Animated by such expectations, he had 
been the life of the Hague during the late winter. He had been the 
most conspicuous figure at a succession of balls in that splendid 
Orange hall which blazes on every side with the most ostentatious 
coloring of Jordaens and Hondthorst. He had taught the English 
country-dance to the Dutch ladies, and had in his turn learned from 
them to skate on the canals. The princess had accompanied him in 
his expeditions on the ice ; and the figure which she made there, poised 
on one leg, and clad in petticoats shorter than are generally worn by 
ladies so strictly decorous, had caused some wonder and mirth to the 
foreign ministers. The sullen gravity which had been characteristic 
of the Stadtholder's court seemed to have vanished before the influ- 



150 MACAULAY. [chap. 

ence of the fascinating Englishman. Even the stern and pensive 
WiUiam relaxed into good -humour when his brilliant guest ap- 
peared." 

Will any one say that this is idle and redundant orna- 
ment ? Could the two men who came to deliver England 
from the dull folly of James II. be more clearly and rapid- 
ly sketched, and the failure of the one and the success of 
the other more suggestively traced back to the difference 
of their respective characters ? 

A similar remark applies to the careful and elaborate 
portraits by which all the chief and most of the secondary 
characters are introduced. They have been much blamed 
— and with reason — by those whose notions of history are 
opposed to Macaulay's. It must be admitted also that he 
had not a quick eye for character, and little of that skill 
which sketches in a few strokes the memorable features 
of a face or a mind. Still, from his point of view such 
portraits were quite legitimate, and it cannot be denied 
that in their way they are often admirably done. They 
overflow with knowledge, they convey in it an attractive 
form, and they are inserted with great art just when they 
are wanted. Even their length, which sometimes must be 
pronounced excessive, never seems to interfere with the 
action of the story. In such an extensive gallery it is dif- 
ficult to make a selection. Perhaps the twentieth chapter, 
containing the fine series of portraits of Sunderland, Rus- 
sell, Somers, Montague, Wharton, and Harley, may be 
named as among the most remarkable. Taken altogether 
they occupy more than twenty pages. An important sub- 
ject — the first formation of a Ministry ,in the modern 
sense of the word — is dropped for the purpose of introdu- 
cing them, yet so skilful is the handling that we are con- 
scious of no confusing interruption. This merit distin- 



v.] THE "HISTORY." 151 

giiishes Macaulay's illustrations, and even digressions, al- 
most invariably. They never seem to be digressions. 
Instead of quenching the interest, they heighten it ; and 
after his widest excursions he brings the reader back to 
the original point with a curiosity more keen then ever in 
the main story. Greater evidence of power could hardly 
be given. • 

In criticising Macaulay's History we should ever bear 
in mind it is after all only a fragment, though a colossal 
fragment. We have only a small portion of the edifice 
that he had planned in his mind. History, which has so 
many points of contact with architecture, resembles it also 
in this, that in both impressiveness largely depends on size. 
A few arches can give no adequate notion of the long 
colonnade. Of Macaulay's work we have, so to speak, 
only a few arches. It is true that he built on such a 
scale that the full completion of his design was beyond 
the limited span of one man's life and power. But had 
he liv^d ten or fifteen years longer — as he well might, and 
then not have exceeded the -^ga of several of his great 
contemporaries, Hallam, Thiers, Guizot, Michelet, Ranke, 
Carlyle — and carried on his work to double or treble its 
present length, it is difficult to exaggerate the increased 
grandeur which would have resulted. Such n structure, 
so spacious and lofty, required length for harmonious pro- 
portion. As it is, the History of England reminds one 
of the unfinished cathedral of Beauvais. The ornate and 
soaring choir wants the balance of a majestic nave, and 
the masterpiece of French Gothic is deprived of its proper 
rank from mere incompleteness. 

Unfortunately, the History can be reproached with more 
serious faults than incompleteness. The most common 
objections are the unfair party-spirit supposed to pervade 



162 MACAULAY. [chap. 

the book, and its strange inaccuracies as to matters of 
fact. 

The accusation of party-spirit seems on the whole to be 
unfounded, and we may suspect is chiefly made by those 
whose own prejudices are so strong that they resent im- 
partiality nearly as much as hostility. He that is not 
with them is against them. Macaulay, when he wrote his 
History^ had ceased to be a party man as regards con- 
temporary politics, and in his work he is neither a Whig 
nor a Tory but a Williaraite. He over and over condemns 
the Whigs in unqualified terms, and he always does justice 
to the really upright and high-minded Tories. The proof 
of this will be found in the warmth of his eulogy and ad- 
miration for eminent nonjurors, such as Bishop Ken and 
Jeremy Collier. As clergymen and uncompromising To- 
ries they would have been equally repugnant to him, if 
party -spirit had governed his sympathies to the extent 
supposed. The fact is that there are few characters men- 
tioned in the whole course of his History of wh(^m he 
speaks in such warm, almost such enthusiastic, praise. Of 
the sainted Bishop of Wells he writes with a reverence 
which is not a common sentiment with him for anybody. 
Of the author of a Short View of the English Stage he is 
likely to be thought by those who have read that book to 
speak with excessive eulogy. But he considered them 
very justly to be thoroughly upright and conscientious 
men, and for such, it must be admitted, he had a very 
partial feeling. It would not be easy to show that he has 
ever been unjust or at all unfair to the Tories as a party 
or as individuals. He blames them freely ; but so he 
blames the Whigs. The real origin of this charge of par- 
ty-spirit may probably be traced to the unfavourable im- 
pression he conveys of the house of Stuart. The sentv 



v.] THE "HISTORY." 153 

mental Jacobitism fostered by Scott and others took of- 
fence at his treatment of the king of the Cavaliers and his 
two sons. But is he unfair, or even unduly severe ? If 
ever a dynasty of princes was condemned, and deserved 
condemnation, at the bar of history, it was that perverse 
and incompetent race, who plotted and carried out their 
own destruction witii a perseverance which other sover- 
eigns have brought to the consolidation of their power. 
Are impartial foreigners, such as Ranke and Gneist, less 
severe ? On the contrary. " Another royal family," says 
the latter, " could hardly be named which has shown on 
the throne in an equal degree such a total want of all 
sense of kingly duty." Nay, we have what some persons 
will consider the highest authority pronouncing in Macau- 
lay's favour. We read in his diary of March 9,1850: 
"To dinner at the palace. The Queen was most gracious 
to me. She talked much about my book, and owned she 
had nothing to say for her poor ancestor James II." One 
can understand a preference for arbitrary power ; one can 
appreciate an admiration for ^the heroic Strafford. But 
Charles I. and James II. were mere blunderers, whose lust 
for power was only equalled by their inability to use it. 

With regard to individuals the case is different. He 
allowed himself to cultivate strong antipathies towards a 
number of persons — statesmen, soldiers, men of letters — 
in the past, and he pursued them with a personal animosi- 
ty which could hardly have been exceeded if they had 
crossed him in the club or the House of Commons. He 
conceived a contemptuous view of their characters; his 
strong historical imagination gave them the reality of 
living beings, whom he was always meeting " in the cor- 
ridors of Time," and each encounter embittered his hostil- 
ity. Marlborough, Penn, and Dundee (in his History)^ 



154 MACAULAY. [chap.. 

Boswell, Impey, and Walpole (in his Essays), always more: 
or less stir his bile, and his prejudice leads him into serious, 
inaccuracies. One naturally seeks to inquire what may 
have been the cause of such obliquity in a man who was. 
never, by enmity itself, accused of wanting generous feel- 
ings, and whom it is almost impossible to suspect of con- 
scious unfairness. The truth seems to be that Macaulay 
had, like most eminent men, les defauts de ses qualites.. 
One of his qualities was a punctilious regard for truth and 
straightforward dealing. Another was supreme commoa; 
sense. The first made him hate and despise knaves, the; 
second made him detest dunces ; and he did both with un- 
necessary scorn — with a sort of donnish and self-righteous, 
complacency which is anything but winning. He made- 
up his mind that Boswell was a pushing, impertinent fool ;, 
and for fools he had no mercy. He satisfied himself that, 
Bacon was a corrupt judge; that Impey was an unju5?t, 
judge; that Marlborough was a base, avaricious time- 
server; and that Penn was a pompous hypocrite, or some- 
thing very like it. For such vices he had little or no. 
tolerance, and he was somewhat inclined to lose his head' 
in his anger at them. That in all the cases referred to he 
showed precipitancy and, what is worse, obstinate persist- 
ence in error, unfortunately, cannot be denied. But there 
was nothing unworthy in his primary impulse. It was a 
perverted form of the sense of justice to which upright- 
men are sometimes prone, somewhat resembling that ar- 
rogance of virtue which misleads good women into harsh- 
ness towards their less immaculate sisters. 

Whatever this plea may be worth, it cannot blind us to- 
the serious breaches of historical fidelity which he has been! 
led to commit. Mr. Paget, in his New Examen, has proved 
beyond question that, with regard to Marlborough and 



v.] THE "HISTORY." 155 

Penn, Macaulay bas been guilty of gross inaccuracy, nay, 
even perversions of the truth. For details of the evidence 
the reader must consult Mr. Paget. The miscarriage of the 
attack on Brest, which Macaulay lays exclusively " on the 
basest of all the hundred villanies of Marlborough," is 
shown to have failed through the imprudent valour ^of 
Talmash. 'William and his ministers were well aware that 
the French knew of the expedition, and had long been pre- 
pared to repel it. The King writes, " They were long ap- 
prised of our intended attack," and mildly lays the blame 
on the rashness of his own general. But Macaulay makes 
it appear that through Marlborough's treachery the English 
forces went blindly to their own destruction. Expecting 
to surprise the French, we are told, they found them armed 
to the teeth, solely in consequence of information sent to 
James II. by Churchill ; hence the* failure, and the deaths 
of Talmash and many brave men, of whom Macaulay does 
not' scruple to call Marlborough the "murderer." It must 
be owned that this is very serious ; and it does not much 
mend the matter to ascribe, as we surely may, Macaulay's 
inaccuracy to invincible prejudice, rather than to ignorance 
or dishonesty. He was thoroughly convinced that Marl- 
borough was a faithless intriguer, which may be quite true ; 
but that was no reason for charging him with crimes which 
he did not commit. Let it be noticed, however, that the 
refusal to be dazzled by military glory, and to accept it as 
a set-off to any moral delinquency, is no vuJgar merit in an 
historian. Mr. Carlyle has been heard to say that Rhada- 
manthus would certainly give Macaulay four dozen lashes, 
when he went to the Shades^for his treatment of Marl- 
borough. This is quite in character for the Scotch apostle 
of *' blood and iron." Macaulay could admire military 
genius when united with magnanimity and public virtue 



156 MACAULAY. [chap. 

as warmly as any one. But he could not accept it as a 
compensation for the want of truth and honour. 

His treatment of Penn admits of the same kind of im- 
perfect palliation. He had satisfied himself that the Quak- 
er was, for a time at least, a time-server and a sycophant. 
And he allowed his disgust at such a character to hurry 
him into culpable unfairness, which has been exposed by 
the late Mr. Hepworth Dixon and Mr. W. E. Forster, as 
well as by Mr. Paget. The animosity with which he pur- 
sues Penn — the false colouring amounting, in places, to 
real misrepresentation, which he gives to actions innocent 
or laudable, can only excite astonishment and regret. His 
account of Penn's interference in the dispute between the 
King and Magdalen College is almost mendacious. He 
would make it appear that Penn acted merely as a ready 
and unscrupulous tool of James H. "The courtly Quaker 
did his best to seduce the College from the right path. 
He first tried intimidation." (Hist., cap. viii.) Now, noth- 
ing is more certain than that it was the College which in- 
voked Penn's mediation with the King. The whole sub- 
ject is a painful one, and we would gladly leave it. The 
only inducement we can have to linger over it is the query, 
What was the chief motive or origin of such historical un- 
faithfulness ? A partial answer to this question has been 
attempted above — that a wrong-headed species of righteous 
indignation got possession of the writer's mind, and led him 
into the evil paths of injustice and untruth. But there was 
besides another temptation to lead Macaulay astray, to which 
few historians have been exposed in an equal degree. His 
plan of assimilating real to.fictitious narrative — of writing 
history on the lines of the novel — obscured or confused 
his vision for plain fact. His need of lighter and darker 
shades caused him to make colours when he could not find 



T.] THE "HISTORY.'^ 157 

tlicni ; his necessities as an artist forced him to correct the 
adverse fortune which had not provided him with the tints 
which his purpose required. No well-constructed play or 
novel can dispense with a villain, whose vices throw up in 
brighter relief the virtues of tlie hero and the heroine. 
That he did yield to this temptation we have ample evi- 
dence. It caused him to use his authorities in a way that 
serious history must entirely condemn. Mr. Spedding has 
shown how freely he deviated into fiction in his libel on 
Bacon : a molecule of truth serves as a basis for a super- 
structure of fancy. To Bacon's intellectual greatness a 
contrast was needed — and it is found partly in the gen- 
erosity of Essex, and partly in his own supposed moral 
baseness. A good instance of Macaulay's tendency to per- 
vert his authorities to artistic uses will be found in his ac- 
count of the dying speech of Robert Francis, who was ex- 
ecuted for the alleged murder of Dangerfield, by striking 
him in the eye with a cane. Repelling a scandalous report 
that the act had been prompted by jealousy, on the ground 
of Dangerfield's criminal relations with his wife, Francis 
declared on the scaffold that he was certain that she had 
never seen him in her whole life, and added, " Besides that, 
she is as virtuous a woman as lives; and born of so good 
and loyal a family, she would have scorned to prostitute 
herself to such a profligate person." In Macaulay's version 
this statement is altered and dressed up thus : 

"The dying husband, with an earnestness half ridiculous, half 
pathetic, vindicated the lady's character ; she was, he said, a virtuous 
woman, she came of a loyal stock, and if she had been inclined to 
break her marriage vow, would at least have selected a Tory and a 
Churchman for her paramour." 

This is the result of treating history in the style of 
romance. It is, no doubt, probably true that if the virt- 



158 MACAULAY. [cfeAP. 

nous and calumniated Mrs. Francis had permitted herself 
to have a paramour, he would have been a Tory and a 
Churchman. But what are we to think of an historian 
who presents in oratio ohliqua this poetic probability as 
the actual assertion of the dying husband? 

It is even less easy to account for Macaulay's treatment 
of the Anglican clergy. No one thing in his History gave 
such deep and permanent offence. It is difficult even to 
surmise a reason for the line he took. The imperfect ex- 
cuses which may be pleaded for his injustice to individ- 
uals, will not avail in this case. Neither an ill-regulated 
zeal for virtue, nor the needs of picturesque history, de- 
manded the singular form of depreciation of the English 
clergy which he has allowed himself. He does not arraign 
their morality, or their patriotism, or even their culture 
on the whole — but their social position: they were not 
gentlemen ; they were regarded as on the whole a plebeian 
class ; " for one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten 
were menial servants." He must have been well aware 
that such a reflection conveyed an affront which, in our 
society, would not readily be forgiven. Nor has it been. 
One frequently meets with persons who will not tolerate 
a good word for Macaulay ; and if the ground of their 
repugnance is sought for, we generally find it in these 
remarks upon the clergy. The climax of insult was 
reached in the aspersion thrown on the wives of clergy- 
men, that they were generally women whose " characters 
had been blown upon ;" and this is based on no better 
authority than a line in Swift — unusually audacious, 
cynical, and indecent, even for him. The tone of the 
whole passage — some eight or ten pages— savours more 
of satire and caricature than of sober history. Whether 
that "invincible suspicion of parsons" which Mr Leslie 



v.] THE "HISTORY." 159 

Stephen declares to be a characteristic of the true Whig, 
was at the bottom of it, one would not like to say. But 
few would deny that Macaulay, in his treatment of the 
Church of England, has more openly yielded to the 
promptings of party-spirit than in any other portions of 
his History, 

Nevertheless, they deceive themselves who think that 
they can brand Macaulay with the stigma of habitual 
and pervading unfaithfulness. He does not belong to 
that select band of writers whose accuracy may be taken 
for granted — to the class of Bentley, Gibbon, and Bayle — 
who seem provided with an extra sense which saves them 
from the shortcomings of other men. He has a share of 
ordinary human infirmity, but not a large share. He can 
be prejudiced and incorrect ; but these failings are most 
assuredly the exception, not the rule. Above all, he 
impresses all impartial judges with a conviction of his 
honesty. " There never was a writer less capable of 
intentional unfairness," says Mr. Gladstone, who still is 
well aware how inaccurate he* could be on occasion. His 
inaccuracy arose from hearty dislike for men of whom he 
honestly thought ill. Of conscious duplicity and untruth, 
no one who knows him can conceive him guilty. 

We now turn to the reservation made a few pages 
back, and inquire how far Macaulay's conception of his- 
tory deserves to be commended in itself, irrespective of 
the talent with which he put it into execution. 

In a letter to Macvey Napier, Macaulay wrote : " I 
have at last begun my historical labours. . . . The materials 
for an amusing narrative are immense. I shall not be 
satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few 
days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of 
young ladies." We did not need this intimation to make 



160 MACAULAY. [chap. 

us acqaainted with the chief object which the writer had 
in view ; but it is satisfactory to have it, as now no doubt 
remains on the subject. This, then, was Macaulay's pole- 
star, by which he guided his historical argosy over the 
waters of the past — young ladies for readers, laying down 
the novel of the season to take up his History of England. 
His star led him to the port for which he steered. But 
how widely it made him depart from the great ocean 
highway frequented by ships bound for more daring vent- 
ures, it is now our business to examine and show. 

The chief objections which may be made against the 
History are the following : 

(l.) Want of generalized and synthetic views. 
(2.) Excessive diffuseness. 
(3.) Deficient historical spirit. 

(1.) As a work of art the History is so bright and im- 
pressive, it appeals so strongly to the imagination, that we 
do not at first perceive how little it appeals to the reason, 
or how little it offers by way of enlightenment to the 
mind. Any page, or even chapter taken at random, is 
almost sure to charm us by its colour, variety, and inter- 
est. But when we read a whole volume, or, still more, the 
whole work through, pretty rapidly, we become conscious 
of a great omission. In spite of the amazing skill of the 
narrative, of the vivid and exciting scenes that are mar- 
shalled past us as on some great stage, the reflective fac- 
ulty finds its interest diminishing ; while the eye and the 
fancy are surfeited with good things, the intellect is sent 
empty away. It is not easy to retain any definite impres- 
sion of what the book has taught us. We. remember that 
while reading it we had a most amusing entertainment, 
that crowds of people in old-fashioned costumes, who took 
part in exciting scenes, were presented us. But our recol- 



v.] THE "HISTORY." 161 

lection of the whole resembles very mucli onr recollection 
of a carnival or a masked ball a few weeks after it is over. 
Our memory of English history seems to have been at 
once brightened and confused. 

The reason, as Macaulay would have said, is very obvi- 
ous : while no historian ever surpassed him in the art of 
brilliantly 'narrating events, few among the men of mark 
have been so careless or incapable of classifying them in 
luminous order, which attracts the attention of the mind. 
Engrossed with the dramatic and pictorial side of history, 
he paid little attention to that side which gives expression 
to general views, which embraces a mass of details in an 
abstract statement, thereby throwing vastly increased light 
and interest on tlie details themselves. He never resumes 
in large traits the character of an epoch — never traces in 
clear outline the movement (entwicklungsgang) of a pe- 
riod, showing as on a skeleton map the line of progress. 
It does not appear that he yielded to the silly notion that 
abstract history must necessarily be incorrect. All histo- 
ry, unfortunately, is liable to' be incorrect, and concrete 
history as much as any. It is nearly as easy to blunder in 
summing up the character of a man — as Penn or Marlbor- 
ough — as in summing up the character of a period. There 
can be no doubt, however, which is the more valuable and 
important thing to do. History must become a chaos if 
its increasing volume and complexity are not lightened 
and methodized by general and synthetic views. It is in 
this respect that the modern school of history is so supe- 
rior to the ancient. We may see this by remarking the 
errors into which the greatest men formerly fell — froni 
which very small men are now preserved. When we find 
such a statesman as Machiavelli ascribing the fall of the 
Roman Empire to the treachery and ambition of Stilicho, 



162 MACAULAY. [chap. 

who " contrived that the Burgundians, Franks, Yandals, 
and Alans should assail the Roman provinces;" when we 
find such a genius as Montesquieu accounting for the same 
catastrophe by the imprudent transfer of the seat of em- 
pire, which carried all the wealth from Rome to Constan- 
tinople ; or such a scholar as Gibbon still explaining the 
same event by the refusal of the Roman legionaries to 
wear defensive armour, we are able to appreciate the prog- 
ress that has been made in comprehending the past. Those 
great men saw nothing absurd in attributing the most mo- 
mentous social transformation recorded in history to quite 
trivial and superficial causes. If we know better, it is be- 
cause the study of society, whether past or present, has 
made some progress towards scientific shape. This prog- 
ress was not furthered by Macaulay. He contributed 
nothing to our intelligence of the past, though he did so 
much for its pictorial illustration. 

For instance. He has not grasped and reproduced in 
well-weighed general proportions the import and historical 
meaning of the Stuart period, which was his real object. 
He has painted many phases of it with almOvSt redundant 
fulness. Biit he has not traced the evolution of those 
ideas and principles which mark its peculiar cliaracter. 
He mentions the " strange theories of Filmer," but instead 
of pointing out their origin, and the causes of their growth 
(which was the historical problem) he seriously controverts 
them from the modern point of view,-as if Filmer needed 
refuting nowadays. He devotes over two pages to this 
work of supererogation. But if we ask why this notion 
of divine right rose into such prominence at this particular 
time, he has nothing to say. He rarely or never accounts 
for a phase of thought, institution, or line of policy, 
tracing it back to antecedent causes, and showing how, 



v.] THE *' HISTORY." 103 

under the circumstances, it was the natural and legitimate 
result. What he does is to describe it with often weari- 
some prolixity. He describes the Church of England over 
and over again from the outside, from a sort of dissenter's 
point of view ; but except the not recondite suggestion 
that the Church of England was a compromise between 
the " Church of Rome and the Church of Geneva," he 
really tells us nothing. This idea of a compromise strikes 
him as so weighty and important that he develops it witli 
an elaboration which is common with him, and which 
Mr. Leslie Stephen irreverently '^hIIs his zeal " for blacking 
t.he chimney." Thus : 

"In every point of her system the same policy may be traced. 
Utterly rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, and condemning 
4s idolatrous all adoration paid to sacramental bread and wine, she 
vet, to the disgust of the Puritan, required her children to receive the 
memorials of Divine love meekly kneeling upon their knees. Dis- 
carding many rich vestments which surrounded the altars of the 
ancient faith, she yet retained, to the horror of weak minds, the robe 
of white linen, which typified the purity which belonged to her as the 
mystical spouse of Christ. Discarciing a crowd of pantomimic gest- 
ures, which in the Roman Catholic worship are substituted for intel- 
ligible words, she yet shocked many rigid Protestants by marking 
the infant just sprinkled from the font with the sign of the cross. 
The Roman Catholic addressed his prayers to a multitude of saints, 
among whom were numbered many men of doubtful, and some of 
hateful character. The Puritan refused the addition of saint, even 
to the apostle of the Gentiles and to the disciple whom Jesus loved. 
The Church of England, though she asked for the intercession of no 
created being, still set apart days for the commemoration of some 
who had done and suffered great things for the faith. She retained 
confirmation and ordination as edifying rites, but she degraded them 
from the rank of sacraments. Shrift was no part of her system; 
yet she gently invited the dying penitent to confess his sins to a 
divine, and empowered her ministers to soothe the departing soul by 
an absolution which breathes the very spirit of the old religion. In 
8 



164 MACAULAY. [chap. 

general, it may be said that she appeals more to the understanding, 
and less to the senses and the imagination, than the Church of 
Rome ; and that she appeals less to the understanding, and more to 
the senses and imagination, than the Protestant churches of Scotland, 
France, and Switzerland." 

There are five pages more of a quality quite up to this 
sample. Now, the point to be noticed is that this is not 
history at all. The historian of the seventeenth century 
is not concerned with what the Church of England is or 
is not ; but with hotv she came to he what she was in the 
days of the Stuarts. What we want to know is how and 
■why the Puritan bishops of Elizabeth were succeeded in 
a few years by the High Church bishops of James and 
Charles? Those who ask these questions must not ad- 
dress themselves to Macaulay. He can only tell them that 
" the Arminian doctrine spread fast and wide," and that 
" the infection soon reached the court." Why the trans- 
formation of opinion took place he does not attempt to 
explain. The singular theory which he held as to the 
inherent unreasonableness of all religious opinion — that 
it was a matter of mere accident and caprice — no doubt 
seriously hampered him in his treatment of these topics. 
But it is strange that he was not surprised at his own 
inability to deal with a whole order of historical phenom- 
ena of con&tant recurrence since Europe became Christian. 
How differently did Gibbon handle a vastly more diffi- 
cult theme — the orthodox and heretical dogmas of the 
early Church. 

Even the constitutional side of his subject is neglected, 
though probably few historians or politicians have known 
it better or have valued it more. But we look in vain in 
his pages for a clear exposition, freed from the confusion 
of details, of the progressive stages of the conflict between 



v.] THE "HISTORY." 1C5 

the Crown and the Parliament during the Stuart period — 
the momenta of the struggle set forth in luminous order, 
showing how a move on one side w^s answered by a move 
on the other. In vivid concrete narrative Macaulay has 
few equals; but in that form of abstract narrative which 
traces the central idea and energy of a social movement, 
carefully 'excluding the disturbing intrusion of particular 
facts, he showed little aptitude ; when he attempts it, he 
cannot maintain it for long; he falls oJEf into his bright 
picturesque style. It is not easy to see what purpose 
Macaulay had in view by writing his first chapter in its 
present form. A brief and weighty sketch of the growth 
and progress of the English constitution would have been 
a worthy preface" to his history of the last great struggle 
for parliamentary government. But he has not attempted 
anything of the kind. It would not have occurred to 
every one to review English history from the Saxon 
times, and not mention once Simon de Montfort's name, 
nor even refer to the institutions he fostered, except with 
a vagueness that was utterly unmeaning. The thirteenth 
century he describes as a "sterile and obscure" portion 
of our annals. He even does his best to appear guilty 
of an ignorance with which it is impossible to credit 
him. Speaking of the Norman Conquest, he says "the 
talents and even the virtues of the first six French kings 
were a curse to England ; the follies and vices of the 
seventh were her salvation." And why ? Because, " If 
John had inherited the great qualities of his father, of 
Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror . . . the house of 
Plantagenet must have risen to unrivalled ascendency in 
Europe." Frightful results would have followed. " Eng- 
land would never have had an independent existence 
. . . the noble language of Milton and Burke would have 



166 MAC AXIL AY. [chap< 

remained a rustic dialect, without a literature, a fixed 
grammar, or a fixed orthography." It is not easy to 
believe that Macaulay was unaware of the debt that Eng- 
land owed to her vigorous Norman and Angevin kings— 
that their strong despotism carried our country rapidly 
through several stages of political development, for which 
other nations had to wait for centuries. In the same 
light vein he has a strange paragraph about the "parlia- 
mentary assemblies" of Europe, in which he contrasts the 
failure of parliamentary government on the Continent 
with its success in England. The reason was that those 
assemblies were not wise like the English parliament was: 
they were not sufficiently vigilant and cautious in voting 
taxes. The policy which they " ought to have adopted 
was to take their stand firmly on their constitutional 
right to give or withhold money, and resolutely to refuse 
funds for the support of armies, till ample securities had 
been provided against despotism. This wise policy was 
followed in our country alone." This policy succeeded 
in England alone ; but it was tried repeatedly in France 
and Spain during several centuries, and if it failed it was 
certainly not because Frenchmen and Spaniards over* 
looked its wisdom, but because that unanimity of na- 
tional life which the Norman Conquest had produced in 
England was absent in those countries. But Macaulay 
as an historian cared for none of these things. His 
morbid dread of dulness made him shrink from them. 
In this very chapter, where he cannot find space for the 
most important topics of English history, he readily 
dilates in his picturesque way on the manners of the 
Normans during a page and a half. 

(2.) As regards his diffuseness there can be but one 
opinion. The way in which he will go on repeating the 



T.] THE "HISTORY." ir,7 

same idea in every form and variation that his vast re- 
sources of language enabled him to command is extraordi- 
nary to witness. He seems to take as much pains to be 
redundant and prolix as other men take to be terse and 
compressed. When he has to tell us that the Reformation 
greatly diminished the wealth of the Church of England, it 
costs hinrtwo pages to say so.' When he has to describe 
the change that came over Tory opinion after the trial of 
the seven bishops, he requires six pages to deliver his 
thought.^ And this is his habitual manner whenever he 
depicts the state of religious or political opinion. That 
it was intentional cannot be doubted ; it was his way of 
" making his meaning pellucid," as he said ; which it cer- 
tainly did, rendering it as clear as distilled water, and about 
as strong. But it would be rash to assume that it was a 
mistake from his point of view. The young ladies on 
whom he had fixed his eye when he began to write had to 
be considered ; a Sallustian brevity of expression would 
easily drive them back to their novels, and this was a dan- 
ger to avoid. 

(3.) The most serious objection remains, and it is noth 
ing less than this, that he was deficient in the true historic 
spirit, and often failed to regard the past from the really 
historical point of view. What is the historical point of 
view? Is it not this: to examine the growth of society 
in by-gone times with a single eye for the stages of the 
process — to observe the evolution of one stage out of an- 
other previous stage — to watch the past, as far as our 
means allow, as we watch any other natural phenomena, 
with the sole object of recording them accurately? The 
impartiality of science is absolute. It has no preferences, 
likes, or dislikes. It considers the lowest and the highest 
^ History^ cap. iii. * Ibid.^ cap. ix. 



168 MACAULAY. [chap. 

forms of life with the same interest and the same zeal ; it 
makes no odious comparisons between lower and higher, 
between younger and older; but simply observes co-ordi- 
nates, in time rising to generalizations and deductions. 
The last work of the greatest of English biologists was' de- 
voted to earth-worms, a subject which earlier science would 
have treated with scorn. No w% what does Macaulay do in 
liis observation of the past? He compares it, to its dispav' 
ayement, with the present. The whole of his famous third 
chapter, on the State of England, is one long paean over.the 
superiority of the nineteenth century to the seventeenth 
century — as if an historian had the slightest concern with 
that. Whether we are better or worse than our ancestors 
is a matter utterly indifferent to scientific history, whose 
object is to explain and analyze the past, on which the 
present can no more throw light than the old age of an 
individual can throw light on his youth. Macaulay's con^ 
stant preoccupation is not to explain his period by previ- 
ous periods, but to show how vastly the period of which 
he treats has been outstripped by the period in which he 
lives. Whatever may be the topic — the wealth or popula- 
tion of the country, the size and structure of the towns, the 
roads, the coaches, the lighting of London, it matters not 
— the comparison always made is with subsequent England, 
not previous England. His enthusiasm for modern im- 
provements is so sincere that it produces the comical effect 
of a countryman's open-eyed astonishment at the wonders 
of Cheapside. Of Manchester he says : 

" That wonderful emporium was then a mean, ill-built market-town, 
containing under six thousand people. It then" had not a single 
press : it now supports a hundred printing establishments. It then 
had not a single coach : it now supports twenty coach-makers.'* 



v.] • THE "HISTORY." 169 

Of Liverpool : 

"At present Liverpool contains more than three hundred thousand 
inhabitants. The shipping registered at her port amounts to be- 
tween four and five hundred thousand tons. Into her custom-house 
has been repeatedly paid in one year a sum more than thrice as 
great as the whole income of the English Crown in 1685. The re- 
ceipts of Her post-office, even since the great reduction of the duty, 
exceed the sum which the postage of the whole kingdom yielded to 
the Duke of York. Her endless quays and warehouses are among 
the wonders of the world. Yet even those docks and quays and 
warehouses seem hardly to suffice for the gigantic trade of the Mer- 
sey ; and already a rival city is growing fast on the opposite shore." 

Of Cheltenham we are told : " Corn grew and cattle 
browsed over the space now covered by that long succes- 
sion of streets and villas." 

In Tunbridge Wells — 

" we see a town which would a hundred and sixty years ago have 
ranked in population fourth or fifth among the towns of England. 
The brilliancy of the shops, and the luxury of the private dwellings^ 
far surpasses anything that England could then show." 

The list might be indefinitely extended. A word may 
be added on Macanlay's delight in villas. They were evi- 
dently to him one of the most attractive features in a 
town or a landscape. Contrasting the London of Charles 
IL with the London of the present day, he says : 

" The town did not as now fade by imperceptible degrees into the 
country. No long avenues of villas, embowered in lilacs and labur- 
nums, extended from the great centre of wealth and civilization al- 
most to the boundaries of Middlesex. ... On the west, scarcely one 
of those stately piles of building which are inhabited by the noble 
and the wealthy was in existence." 

Even in the crisis of his hero's fate, when William is 
about to land at Torbay, he cannot forget to do justice to 



110 MAC AULA Y. [chap. v. 

his favourite form of domestic architecture. Speaking of 
Torquay he says : 

" The inhabitants are about ten thousand in number. The newly 
built churches and chapels, the baths and libraries, the hotels and 
public gardens, the infirmary and museum, the white streets rising 
terrace above terrace, the gay villas peeping from the midst of shrub- 
beries and flower-beds, present a spectacle widely different from any 
that in the seventeenth century England could show." 

Now the serious question is whether the very opposite 
of the historical spirit and method is not shown in remarks 
of this kind ? Supposing even we share Macaulay's singu- 
lar partiality for villas — which is the last thing many would 
be disposed to do — yet what bearing have modern villas 
on the history' of England in the seventeenth century ? 
This is to invert the historical problem ; to look at the 
past through the wrong end of the telescope. The ex- 
planation of this singular aberration will probably be found 
in Macaulay's constant immersion in politics. Many pas- 
sages of his history have the appearance of fragments of a 
budget speech setting forth the growth of the country in 
wealth and population, and consequent capacity to supply 
an increased revenue. When he answered poor Southey's 
sentimental dreams about the virtue and happiness of the 
olden time, he was nearly wholly in the right. But he did 
not see that this polemical attitude was out of place in his- 
tory. He became at too early a period in life a serious 
politician, not to damage his faculty as an historian. Gui- 
zot never recovered his historical eye after he was Prime 
Minister of France, though he lived for nearly thirty years 
in enforced leisure afterwards. Gibbon and Grote had just 
as much of politics as an historian can bear, and neither 
of them remotely equalled Macaulay's. participation in pub* 
lie affairs. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE END. 

Macaulay seems to have enjoyed almost uninterrupted 
good and even robust health until he had passed his fif- 
tieth year. Neither his incessant work, nor the trying cli- 
mate of India, nor the more trying climate of the House 
of Commons, produced more than temporary indisposition, 
which he speedily shook off. He was a broad-chested ac- 
tive man, taking a great deal of exercise, which was how- 
ever almost confined to walking. " He thought nothing 
of going on foot from the Albany to Clapham, and from 
Clapham on to Greenwich ;" and as late as August, in the 
year 1851, he mentions in his diary having walked from 
Malvern to Worcester and back — say sixteen miles. He 
had the questionable habit of reading during his walks, by 
which the chief benefit of the exercise both to mind and 
body is probably lost. The solitary walker is not without 
his compensations, or even his delights. A peculiarly 
vivid meditation is kindled in some men by the unfa- 
tiguing movement, and a massive grouping and clarifying 
of ideas is obtained by a long ramble, which could not be 
reached in the study or at the desk. Rousseau and Words- 
worth habitually composed in their walks. They were 
reading in their own way, but not in the same book: as 
Macaulay. The quantity of printed matter that he could 
MS* 



112 MACAITLAY. Lchap. 

get throngli on these occasions was prodigious, and on a 
lesser authority than his own hardly to be believed. In 
the walk just mentioned, between Worcester and Malvern, 
he read no less than fourteen books of the Odyssey. This 
was only a particular instance of that superabundant en- 
ergy and pervading over-strenuousncss which belonged to 
the constitution of a mind that was well-nigh incapable of 
repose and thoughtful brooding. On a journey " his flow 
of spirits was unfailing — a running fire of jokes, rhymes, 
puns never ceasing. It was a peculiarity of his that he 
never got tired on a journey. As the day wore on he did 
not feel the desire to lie back and be quiet, and he liked 
to find his companions ready to be entertained to the 
last."^ Even when he and his fellow-travellers had gained 
the timely inn, his overpowering vivacity was not quenched, 
but he would produce impromptu translations from Greek, 
Latin, Italian, or Spanish writers, or read selections from 
Sterne, Smollett, or Fielding, or fall to capping verses or 
stringing rhymes with his nephew and nieces. His swift 
energy impressed even strangers as something portentous. 
A bookseller with whom he dealt informs me that he never 
had such a customer in his life ; that Macaulay would come 
into his shop, run through shelf after shelf of books, and 
in less time than some men would take to select a volume, 
he would order a pile of tomes to be sent off to the Al- 
bany. 

Whether this life at constant high - pressure was the 
cause of his health giving way does not appear, but in 
July, 1852, he was suddenly stricken down by heart dis- 
ease, which was soon followed by a confirmed asthma. 
This sudden failure of health seems to have taken him by 
9iM.prjse; but even his own journal shows that he had re-- 
* Trevelyan, vol. ii. cap. xi. 



VI.] THE END. 173 

ceived warnings which to a man of a more introspective 
turn would have been full of significance. But the mal- 
ady declared itself at last with a malignity which even he 
could not overlook. " I became," he says, " twenty years 
older in a week. A mile is more to me now than ten 
miles a *year ago." Forty years of incessant labour had 
done their work. 

What follows right up to the closing scene is very 
touching, and shows that courageous side of Macaulay's 
nature on which his uniformly prosperous life never made 
adequate demands. No man probably would have fought 
a long doubtful uphill fight with more resolute fortitude 
than he. Had his lot been cast in arduous times, had he 
been tried by misfortune, or injustice, or persecution, his 
biography, we may be sure, would have been far more ex- 
citing than it is. Though he was the most peaceful of 
men, he was thoroughly courageous. If he had lived in 
the times of which he was the historian, he would have 
stood in the breach either as a soldier or a politician 
among the bravest: he would have led a forlorn-hope, 
either civic or military, when other men's hearts were fail- 
ing them for fear. Physical or political courage of an 
exceptional kind he was never called upon to show. But 
the calm, patient endurance with which he supported the 
slow invasion of a mortal disease, adds another trait to 
the amiability of a character which was unselfish from 
first to last. Though well aware of the nature of his ill- 
ness, he allowed his sister. Lady Trevelyan, the consola- 
tion of thinking that he did not know how ill he was. 
Oppressed as he was with asthma and heart disease, 
though so weak at times that he could hardly walk even 
with a stick, he resolutely faced and accomplished his 
daily " task," and wrote the whole of the fourth and fifth 



1*74 MACAULAY. [chap. 

volumes with undiminished animation and thoroughness. 
Unfortunately, he was again a member of the House of 
Commons. The people of Edinburgh had promptly re- 
gretted and repented the disgrace they had done them- 
selves by unseating him in 1847 for his sturdy conscien- 
tiousness in supporting the Maynooth Grant, and placed 
him at the head of the poll in the general election of 
1852, even after he had haughtily refused to give any 
pledge, or even to stand for the City. Although his con- 
stituents were willing to grant him every indulgence, and 
his attendance in the House was by no means assiduous, 
yet he often did attend when prudence would have kept 
him at home. " We divided twice," he wrote in his 
diary, " and a very wearisome business it was. I walked 
slowly home at two in the morning, and got to bed much 
exhausted. A few such nights will make it necessary for 
me to go to Clifton again." On another occasion: "I was 
in pain and very poorly. I went down to the House and 
paired. On my return, just as I was getting into bed, I 
received a note from Hayter to say that he had paired 
me. I was very unwilling to go out at that hour" (it was 
in January), "and afraid of the night air; but I have a 
horror of the least suspicion of foul play: so I dressed 
and went again to the House, settled the matter about the 
pairs, and came back at near twelve o'clock." The old in- 
satiable appetite for work returned upon him during the 
intermissions of his malady. He was chairman of the 
committee which was appointed to consider the proposal 
to throw open the Indian Civil Service to public competi- 
tion, and had to draw up the report. " I must and will 
finish it in a week," he wrote, and was as good as his 
word. 

Tie made only three speeches during his last four years 



VI.] THE END. 175 

in the House, all in the year 1853. The effort was far 
too great and exhausting to his shattered strength. Yet 
one of these speeches was a brilliant oratorical triumph, 
a parallel to his performance on the copyright question, 
when he defeated a measure which but for his inter- 
vention would undoubtedly have been carried. Lord 
Hothanj's bill for the exclusion of Judges from the House 
of Commons had passed through all stages but the last 
without a division. Macaulay determined to oppose it, 
but went down to the House very nervous and anxious 
about the result. The success was complete, indeed over- 
whelming. The bill " was not thrown out, but pitched 
out." But the cost was excessive. Macaulay said he was 
knocked up ; ajid a journalist who has left an impressive 
account of the whole scene remarked that he was " trem- 
bling when he sat down, and had scarcely the self-posses- 
sion to acknowledge the eager praises which were offered 
by the Ministers and others in the neighbourhood." 

He was much moved by the Crimean War and the In- 
dian Mutiny, as one might expect; but on neither was 
his line of thought or sentiment at all elevated above tliat 
of the multitude. An ardent admirer of Lord Palmerston, 
his patriotism was of the old-fashioned type — of a man 
who could remember Wellington's campaigns. When 
travelling on the Continent he was accustomed to say that 
lie liked to think that he was a citizen of no mean city. 
Indeed, there was a perceptible element of Chauvinism in 
his composition. The fact calls for no remark; it was 
quite in harmony with the rest of his character, which at 
no time betrayed the slightest tendency to press forward* 
to wider and loftier views than those generally popular in 
his time. Not a doubt seems to have crossed his mind 
as to the policy or expediency of the Crimean War— 



176 MACAULAY. [chap. 

whether it was a wise thing even from a narrowly patriotic 
point of view. There is nothing to show that he^ had 
ever considered or come to any conclusion on the compli- 
cated problems of the Eastern question. His dislike of 
speculation even extended to the domain of politics. It 
would not be easy to cite from his letters and journals 
when travelling abroad a single sentence indicating in- 
terest in and observation of the laws, institutions, and 
local conditions of foreign countries. His utterances on 
the Indian Mutiny can only be read with regret, and 
show what an insecure guide the most benevolent senti- 
ment may be when unsupported by reasoned principle. 
He verified Michelet's aphorism, " Qu'il n'y a rien de si 
cruel que la pitie." In September, 1857, he wrote: "It 
is painful to be so revengeful as I feel myself. I, who 
cannot bear to see a beast or a bird in pain, could look 
on without winking while Nana Sahib underwent all the 
tortures of Ravaillac. . . . With what horror I used to 
read in Livy how Fulvius put to death the whole Capuan 
Senate in the second Punic War! and with what equa- 
nimity I could hear that the whole garrison of Delhi, all 
the Moulavies and Mussulman doctors there, and all the 
rabble of the bazaar, had been treated in the same way ! 
Is this wrong?" Clearly it was wrong in a man of Ma- 
caulay's culture and experience. He might have remem- 
bered with what just severity he had branded cruelty in 
his History and Essays, with what loathing he had spoken 
of the Duke of York's delight in witnessing the infliction 
of torture. One must take the liberty of entirely disbe- 
lieving his report of his own feelings, and of thinking that 
if the matter had been brought to a practical test he 
would much have preferred being tortured by the Nana to 
torturing him himself. His tone, however, is curious as 



VI.] THE END. 177 

• 
one of the many proofs of the nntheoretic cast of his 

mind. Philosophy was well avenged for the scorn with 
which he treated her. 

The glimpse we catch of Macaulay in these latter years, 
sitting with his eyes fixed on death, is touching even to 
strangers; and the reality must have been pathetic and 
painful t^eyond words to those who loved him and had 
ever experienced his boundless affection. He waited for 
the final summons with entire calmness and self-possession. 
" I am a little low," he wrote, " but not from apprehension, 
for I look forward to the inevitable close with perfect 
serenity, but from regret for what I love. I sometimes 
hardly command my tears when I think how soon I may 
leave them." IJe had also another regret, which might 
well have been a poignant one — the leaving of his woi-k 
unfinished ; but he refers to it very softly and sweetly : 
" To-day I wrote a pretty fair quantity of history. 1 should 
be glad to finish William before I go. But this is like the 
old excuses that were made to Charon." As he passed 
through "the cold gradations of decay" his spirit mani- 
festly rose into a higher range. A self-watching tenderness 
of conscience appears, of which it would not be easy to 
find traces before. He was anxious lest the irritability 
produced by disease should show itself by petulance and 
want of consideration for others. " But I will take care. 
I have thought several times of late that the last scene of 
the play was approaching. I should wish to act it simply, 
but with fortitude and gentleness united." At last he 
had been forced to look down into the dark abyss which 
surrounds life, from which he had hitherto turned away 
with rather too marked a persistence. His tone of reso- 
lute contentedness, before his illness, was apt to be too 
emphatic. " October 25, 1859. — My birthday, I am fifty 



178 MACAULAY. [chap. 

Well, I have had a happy life. I do not know that any 
one whom I have seen close has had a happier. Some 
things I regret; but who is better off?" And there are 
other utterances of a similar kind. He clearly avoided, 
on principle as well as from inclination, dwelling on the 
gloomy side of things. It gave him pain to look towards 
the wastes which skirt human existence, and he found no 
profit in doing so. When troubles and trials came he 
knew he could bear them as well as the most ; but he felt 
no call to go and look at them when afar off. He turned 
to the hearths and hearts warm with human love that he 
could trust, and willingly forgot the inclemency outside. 
His contentedness was, no doubt, corroborated by another 
circumstance, that his illness never apparently was of a 
gastric kind. He was never inspired by the tenth (de- 
monic) muse of indigestion, the baleful goddess who is re- 
sponsible for much of the Weltschmerz and passionate 
unrest which has found voice in modern times. But now 
he is brought face to face with realities which cannot be 
ignored. For, by one of those fatalities which seem to 
wait till a man has been brought low before they fall 
upon him with crushing weight, the beloved sister (Lady 
Trevelyan), in whom and in whose family for lang years 
he had garnered up his heart, would be compelled in a 
few months to join her husband in India, where he had 
been appointed Governor of Madras. " He endured it 
manfully, and almost silently, but his spirits never recover- 
ed the blow."^ The full anguish of the blow itself he did 
not live to feel, for he died suddenly and peacefully on 
the evening of the 28th December, 1859, at Holly Lodge, 
whither he had removed in 1856, on leaving his chambers 

^ Trevelyan^ vol. ii. cap. xv. 



VI.] THE END. 179 

in the Albany. He was buried in Poets' Corner, in West- 
minster Abbey, on 9th January, 1860. 

In reviewing Macaulay's life and considering the appli- 
cation of his rare gifts, one is led to wish that fortune Tiad 
either favoured him more or less. Had he been born to 
ancestral wealth and honours, or had he been condemned 
to prolonged poverty and obscurity, it is probable that he 
would have developed resources and powers which, as it 
happened, he was never called upon to display, which it is 
very likely he himself did not suspect. It must be regret- 
ted that he was not free to follow either politics or litera- 
ture with undivided attention. Had he been a broad-acred 
squire with an historic name, we cannot doubt that his life 
would have been devoted to politics ; and we can even less 
doubt that he \Vould promptly have made his way into 
the front rank of contemporary statesmen. His unsurpass- 
ed business talent and faculty of getting through work; 
his oratorical gifts, which would soon, with the proper 
training, have developed into a complete mastery of de- 
bate; his prudence, vigour, self-command, and innate ami- 
ability ; his vast knowledge and instantaneous command 
of it — all poipt to his possessing the stuff of which Eng- 
lish Premiers are made. Who among his contemporaries 
can be named as more endowed with the qualities of a 
great parliamentary leader than he ? Was Lord John Rus- 
sell, or Lord Melbourne, or Lord Derby, or Sir James Gra- 
ham, or Palmerston, or Cornewall Lewis his equal ? If we 
abstract the prestige conferred by great name or great 
fortune in our oligarchic society, he was not the equal, but 
the superior, of all of them, excepting Peel and Disraeli ; 
and he would be rash who ventured to assert that if he 
had been a baronet with 40,000/. a year, like Peel, or had 
been in such a position as Lord Beaconsfield was to devote 



180 MACAULAY. [chap. 

m 
all his time, energy, and ambition to the House of Com- 
mons, he would have yielded to either. But, like Burke- — 
though his case is certainly much less shocking — the novus 
homo of genius was not allowed to compete for the honour 
of serving his country in the highest office. 

On the other hand, suppose that circumstances had ex- 
cluded him from politics altogether, and that he had been 
reduced to literature alone as an avenue to fame. I have 
already said that I think that politics were his forte, and 
that, although he will live in memory chiefly as a writer, 
he was by nature a practical man. But it is not inconsist- 
ent with this view to hold that as a writer he would have 
been all the better if he had not meddled with politics at 
all, or only very sparingly. Politics are a good school for 
a student with an excessive tendency to* seclusion. Gib- 
bon was, probably, benefited by being a • member of the 
House of Commons, because he v/as essentially a recluse, 
and a personal contact with public affairs supplied a use- 
ful corrective to his natural bent. But he never became 
an active politician like Macaulay, and Macaulay was in no 
need of the discipline which was useful to Gibbon. Ma- 
caulay's tendency was very far from being too esoteric 
and speculative. All the gymnastic he could have derived 
from a severe drilling in Hegelianism at Berlin or Tubin- 
gen would barely have sufficed to correct his practical, un- 
speculative tone of mind. Instead of this he had no gym- 
nastic at all, except such as can be got from Greek and 
Latin grammar. Then before he was thirty he became a 
member of Parliament — the very last place, as he well 
knew, likely to foster a broad and philosophic temper. 
Considering what he did achieve in the whirl of business 
in which he lived till he was well advanced into middle 
age, can we doubt that a life of solitude and study would 



VI.] THE END. 181 

have led liira into regions of thought and inquiry to which 
as a matter of fact he never penetrated ? It is not the 
number or even the quality of the books read which makes 
for edification, wisdom, and real knowledge, but the open 
eye, the recipient spirit, the patience and humility content- 
ed to grope slowly towards the light. Macaulay's mode 
of life was adverse to inwardness, reflection, meditation ; 
and he had no such innate tendency in that direction that 
he could dispense with help from any quarter. Outward 
circumstances alone prevented him from taking a first 
rank in politics; circumstances and inward disposition 
combined to deprive him of the very highest rank in 
literature. 

The attempt to classify a great writer, to fix his true 
place on the scroll of fame, is not blameworthy, as if it 
were identical with disparagement. However imperfect 
the attempt may be, if made with good faith it may be 
useful, as leading to a more accurate judgment later on. 
The settlement of the rank and position of eminent 
writers who have clearly passed into the permanent litera- 
ture of a nation cannot be left to the caprice of individual 
readers. Literary history would become a scene of intol- 
erable confusion, without some effort towards grouping 
and classifying the numerous candidates for fame. Earli- 
er attempts in this direction, like the present, are certain 
to be erroneous and faulty in many respects ; but if they 
provoke their own rectification and supersession, they will 
not be useless.. Among English men of letters Macaulay 
must ever hold a place. The question is, what place? 
He is still generally spoken of with somewhat indiscrim- 
inating eulogy ; but a serious opposition has already been 
made to the vulgar estimate of his merits, and it is more 



182 .MACAULAY. [ch^a 

likely to grow than diminish with tlie coming years. An 
equitable agreement is manifestly desirable between those 
who think his eloquence unsurpassed and those who 
think his style detestable ; a middle term will have to be 
found. 

It is an error, not always corrected by age and expe- 
rience, to ask of men and writers what they cannot give. 
Macaulay can give us sumptuous and brilliant pictures of 
past times, which so far have not had their equals.- His 
narrative power among historians is quite unapproached, 
and on a level with ttiat of the greatest masters of prose 
fiction. Here we may pause, and doubt whether eulogy 
can conscientiously go further. On the other hand, he 
has little to say either to the mind or the heart. He has 
not been a pioneer into any ground untrodden by previous 
speculators ; he is not one of those writers whom we seek 
" when our light is low," telling us of the things which 
belong unto our peace. But he has related — or may we 
not say sung? — many great events in English history with 
epic width and grandeur. He was, moreover, an honest, 
brave, tender-hearted man ; a good citizen, a true friend, 
full of affection and self-sacrifice towards his kindred, 
virtuous and upright in every relation of life. It may be 
doubted whether his sweet, unselfish nature would have 
desired higher praise. 



In the year 1875 a statue by Mr. Woolner was erected 
in the ante-chapel of Trinity College, for which the follow- 
ing inscription, at the request of the College, was writtep 
by Professor Jebb : 



THE Ex\D. 18a 

THOMAE BABINGTON BARONI MACAULAT 

HISTORICO DOCTRINA FIDE VIVIDIS INGENII LUMINIBUS PRAECLARO 

QUI PRIMUS ANNALES ITA SCRIPSIT 

UT VERA FICTIS LIBENTIUS LEGERENTUR, 

ORATORI REBUS COPIOSO SENTENTIIS PRESSO ANIMI MOTIBUS ELATO 

QUI CUM OTII STU'DIIS UNICE GAUDERET 

NUNQUAM REIPUBLICAE DEFUIT, 

SIVE INDIA LITTERIS ET LEGIBUS EMENDANDA 

SITE DOMI CONTRA LICENTIAM TUENDA LIBERTAS VOCARET, 

POETAE NIHIL HUMILE SPIRANTI 

VIRO CUI CUNCTORUM VENERATIO 

MINORIS FUIT QUAM SUORUM AMOR 

HUIUS COLLEGII OLIM SOCIO 

QUOD SUMMA DUM VIXIT PIETATE COLUIT 

- AMICI MAERENTES S.S.F.C. 

Of all the posthumous honors Macaulay has receivQc 
this probably would have gratified hira the most. 



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